


Ivory and Gold

by sapphicstanzas



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hate to Love, Lovers To Enemies, M/M, Mafia AU, Revenge, Russian Mafia, Slow Burn, Ulterior Motives, content warnings for drug use/sex/violence, except phichit, like a lot of drug use, no one is rlly a nice person in this au sorry, then back to lovers, various cameos from other characters - Freeform, viktor is a mess and katsuki yuuri will b the death of him, writing these two in anything but a healthy relationship is actually p upsetting, yuuri is a drama queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 22:46:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 229,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11091492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicstanzas/pseuds/sapphicstanzas
Summary: Viktor would have liked to believe they were at a stalemate here, but the reality of the situation was that Katsuki Yuuri was winning this fight. Viktor Nikiforov was going to be dethroned in his own home.  He needed to say something.“How’s the arm?” Viktor drawled.  Katsuki's eyes flashed.“How’s the sex life?”Jesus.-Three years after certain events in Barcelona publicized the end of the Katsuki-Nikiforov crime era, Katsuki Yuuri waits out a death sentence in Fuchū prison and Viktor Nikiforov seems to have developed a commitment to running his own business into the ground. Such is not the legacy Katsuki Yuuri wanted--thus, when given the opportunity to escape his execution sentence in return for Nikiforov's orchestrated arrest, Katsuki accepts. In doing so, he invites all manner of troubles onto himself, not the least of which is that Viktor Nikiforov wants him dead, and maybe--maybe--Katsuki Yuuri doesn't want the same for him.





	1. Bravado

****

Katsuki Yuuri had missed his suits.

Three years in Fuchū had been known to inspire all kinds of strange inmate requests, but this was the first time Phichit Chulanont had encountered a request for a three-piece suit. (This was also the first time Phichit Chulanont had encountered Katsuki Yuuri, and perhaps this was a necessary distinction to be made.)

He stammered, “Excuse me?” Across the table, Katsuki looked perfectly droll.

Based on presentation from the neck up, one would not expect Katsuki Yuuri to be a high profile Fuchū inmate. He looked a respectable young man: fine-boned face that lacked the sharpness that would make one dub it cruel, a neutral expression, hair that was meticulously groomed (though getting to be a little long), eyes that were unnerving only when one ventured to really look at them. Few people ever did.

This was fortunate, because if one cared to look past the face that made Katsuki Yuuri so deceptively unremarkable, one would realize that he was not a perfectly respectable young man. Easily recognizable ink covered the backs of his hands and his arms, disappearing into the sleeves of the prison jumpsuit where, Phichit knew from his arrest head shots, they covered the majority of his chest and back. Not unusual to see at Fuchū, and utterly typical of the bōryokudan, but no less chilling to witness in person.

Katsuki Yuuri blinked, and said again, “A suit? It would make a poor impression to leave Fuchū looking as I do, after so long out of the public eye. Criminals have to keep up appearances, you know.” His voice had the curiously unaccented affectation of someone who had spent too long speaking languages that were not their own. It gave Phichit the feeling that the man handcuffed to the table in front of him had come from nowhere, and everywhere, all at once.

Phichit tried valiantly to keep the quaver from his voice. “I’m sure we can find you a suit.”

“No,” Katsuki said, and his voice was still neutrally polite. “One of my suits. I’m not wearing some cheap shit to be photographed in.”

Phichit gnawed on the inside of his cheek nervously. Every moment that passed reminded him even more sharply that he was not the right man for this. He was a parole officer, not a yakuza handler. For god’s sake, he was not even Japanese. He had not signed up for this when he became an officer four years ago.

Phichit inclined his head in acknowledgement of this request. Then he said, in the boldest voice he could muster: “Mister Katsuki, you seem to be under some misunderstanding about what we are going to do with you.”

Raised eyebrows. This simple action seemed to bring his facial structure in hyper-definition. Katsuki Yuuri was all at once a sharper thing, cut from diamond perhaps, a creature one could now believe had orchestrated one of the deadliest cocaine rings in Europe three years prior. “Oh?” he asked, amusement evident in the word. “And what exactly are you going to do with me, Mister…” His gaze drifted to the uniform tag on Phichit’s chest. “Chulanont?”

Phichit felt the heat rush to his face, but he kept his expression carefully schooled. “Mister Katsuki, we can most certainly arrange for you to be reunited with one of your suits, but I’m afraid your vanity will be rather unfulfilled if you think anyone is going to be photographing you. This is not a public operation.”

“Oh?” The man rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward conspiratorially. He smiled, and Phichit thought he bore a striking resemblance to a shark. “So what exactly are you going to do with me, Mister Chulanont?”

Phichit rose from the table too quickly to be casual, and he saw the smug twist to Katsuki’s mouth that meant he had noticed. Phichit gathered the file into his arms and prayed he dropped nothing. His hands trembled noticeably.

“Mister Katsuki, we are sending you back to Russia.”

* * *

Katsuki Yuuri had not missed Russia.

He realized this as his nervous new handler, parole officer Phichit Chulanont, was checking him out of the solitary confinement block in which Yuuri had spent the most recent three years: Katsuki Yuuri really had no desire to return to Saint Petersburg in this life or any of the next.

“I haven't even agreed to anything yet,” he remarked casually. “I haven't even said yes. What if I say no? What if I don't want to go back to Russia?”

Chulanont did not look as if he had considered this possibility before, nor that he would be considering it now. “All due respect, Mister Katsuki, but I don't think you are being given a choice.” Yuuri weighed this. He nodded.

“I suppose you're right.”

The Thai man was filling out some form of paperwork on his behalf, and Yuuri watched in disinterest. His hands were still cuffed in front of him, a discomfort Yuuri did not appreciate. He had never liked handcuffs, even in the recreational sense, before he had been arrested.

“It needs your signature,” Chulanont was saying, and he slid the file over to Katsuki before the man could protest. Yuuri raised his hands as high as he could (which was not very high, considering they were also chained to his waist) and waved.

“An obstacle,” he said, and Chulanont blushed. Rather my violently.

“Right. Um--” He turned back to the woman at the desk behind the glass. “Does it need a signature? He’s, um--he’s--”

Meeting his gaze with apathy, the woman nodded once. Phichit Chulanont spluttered.

Katsuki Yuuri raised his eyebrows. It was vindicating to see him struggle, perhaps, but Yuuri had also grown tired of being a spectacle. “I suppose I can--” He accepted the proffered fountain pen and did the best imitation of his own signature he could do with his hands tied together and confined to his waist. Utterly undignified. “I hope that’s acceptable.”

“I’m sure,” Chulanont said, relieved, and he ushered him on hurriedly.

The suit they gave him was not a three-piece, but it was certainly one of his own. Chulanont recovered it from the box of Yuuri’s belongings that the desk witch slammed into the counter, and he handed it off to him in a private confession room.

Yuuri was still handcuffed. He looked bemusedly about the room at his company. It included three prison guards, all heavily armed, and one Chulanont, who appeared to be carrying at least a handgun. One way glass stretched across the opposite wall. Yuuri was not naive enough to believe he was unsupervised from the outside either.

“I don't believe I’m _that_ dangerous,” he began wryly, “that I need to invent some way to put on a suit with handcuffs. May I request--”

“Fine.” The biggest of the guards stepped forward, and Yuuri offered his wrists primly for uncuffing. The man was less than gentle in the process, and his wrists were repeatedly pinched. Yuuri narrowed his eyes and murmured a dubious thanks. He rubbed his wrists and, to see Chulanont’s reaction, stretched his arms languidly above his head.

The officer’s expression was marginally satisfying. Yuuri winked, for good measure, which really set him off. “Alright, um, let’s get going. We’ve um, got a debriefing soon and--”

Less garrulous, one of the guards prodded Yuuri in the back with his baton. “Dress.”

Katsuki conceded, stripping out of his jumpsuit as quickly as possible and shrugging on the white shirt from his belongings. Someone had washed it, which was not an act of compassion. Even prison janitors knew one didn’t merely put a Commes de Garçon suit on a spin cycle. He scowled to communicate this.

The rest of the suit presented more problems. Katsuki had leaned out in prison, and put on more muscle. The trousers still attempted valiantly to fit, but they were looser around the waist and tighter in his thighs. The suit jacket was torn, a gash across his right arm that refused subtlety, and pulled slightly across his shoulders. An acceptable fit in which to meet with Japanese prison staff, perhaps, but Yuuri was going to find himself a proper tailor to take his measurements before he left the country.

At the very least, he would be wearing a proper suit when he killed Nikiforov. And if all went well, he would be doing that within the near future.

It was nice to wear a suit again, even an ill-fitting one. He liked the click of his shoes, leather loafers that had cost Viktor an exorbitant price in Moscow, on the tile floor. He especially liked the fact that Viktor would abhor the thought of Yuuri wearing shoes he had bought him now. And he liked the way it made Chulanont visibly uncomfortable, to see him very nearly back in his element again. And all it had taken was a suit.

The next room they escorted him into was larger than the last confessional in which Yuuri had changed clothes. It surprised him--unpleasantly so--to see that the room was filled with very few Tokyo police or Fuchū personnel, and an inordinate amount of foreigners. High profile foreigners too, by the looks of their dress.

Katsuki Yuuri did not fidget, had not fidgeted since he was twenty-two. He began to feel very much like fidgeting now.

“It appears I’m more popular than I had ever dreamed,” he announced with some bravado, but it did little to lessen his growing anxiety. The people gathered at the wide conference table in front of him found little amusement in the comment.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” a white woman said from the far end of the table. Yuuri helped himself to a seat, and when the prison guards did not yank him up out of it again, he propped his elbows on the table.

“Katsuki Yuuri, actually,” he corrected fastidiously. “I don't care for European trends anymore. You understand why.”

The woman looked immediately pained. Yuuri smiled ingratiatingly. He had not always been like this, been so bold. This was their fault. He had been a perfectly polite second-in-command three years ago. Ranging on servile, even, though he would castrate anyone who ventured to say so.

“Katsuki Yuuri,” the woman corrected. “Do you know why you're here?”

He plucked imaginary lint from his cuffs. Someone had stolen his cuff links from his confiscated belongings, and the thought irritated him. They had been diamonds.

“I presume it is because the American CIA or the European Union or some wealthy private organization wants Viktor Nikiforov dead,” Yuuri said. “And I would guess that letting a known yakuza operative do the dirty work and then killing said yakuza after the assassination keeps such an organization’s hands clean, yes? I hope for nationalism’s sake that the Japanese government is going to receive a large compensation for my troubles.”

The woman leaned back in her chair uncomfortably and looked to her companion beside her. He picked up where she left off.

“We do not want Viktor Nikiforov dead,” he began cautiously. Yuuri shrugged.

“That’s a shame,” he said. “I do.”

The man looked surprised. Yuuri wondered why they always looked surprised. He spoke English to his companion suddenly, and Yuuri thought to remind him that Yuuri was fluent in English. He did not.

“Is this the right guy? He seems--”

“This is Katsuki Yuuri. He’s the right one.”

“I don’t know--”

“I’m sure Mister Chulanont still has my file somewhere, if you'd like to confirm my identity,” Yuuri said boredly, in English. “I could even answer a pop quiz based on my most sensational criminal activity, if you are not convinced.”

The two looked comically shocked. Across from Yuuri, a man in a Japanese military uniform demanded the file from Phichit Chulanont’s arms. The young officer provided it with admirable promptness.

The military man opened the file and read concisely:

“Katsuki Yuuri. Now twenty-seven years of age. Born in Hasetsu, Japan, attended the University of Michigan in the United States for four years. Fluent in Japanese, Russian, Mandarin, and English.” At this, Yuuri winked at the American duo.

“Began bōryokudan involvement at twenty years of age. Former Tokyo nightclub dancer turned drug mule, quickly rose in authority in the powerful Plisetsky branch of the Russian Bratva after beginning an intimate relationship with current leader Viktor Nikiforov.”

Yuuri raised his eyebrows, as if this was news to him. He didn't care for Viktor getting all the credit. Most public accounts of the whole Barcelona business had sensationalized the Katsuki-Nikiforov relationship and left to die the numerous testimonies to Katsuki Yuuri’s real talent as a drug lord. The result was a stunning reputation as little more than a Russian mobster’s violent, jilted concubine that preceded Yuuri wherever he was discussed. It was one of the many things for which he resented Viktor.

The man was continuing. “Leader of most prolific and violent cocaine ring in Saint Petersburg in decades, but influence has since spread to all corners of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Wanted on six known accounts of murder--” It had been much more than that. “--and numerous counts of battery, assault, and drug trafficking. Arrested in Barcelona three years ago by international authorities. Sentenced by Japanese courts to death by hanging. Imprisoned in Fuchū facilities since.”

Yuuri spread his hands in a gesture of transparency. He met the gazes of each person seated at the table individually, and then he looked to Phichit Chulanont. He was not sure why.

“Any questions?”

The answer was no. He could see it in their faces.

“Katsuki Yuuri,” someone else began, not American this time but not Japanese either. He could not place the accent, which probably meant the origin was irrelevant. He looked languidly in the direction of the voice. “Katsuki Yuuri, as a joint decision formed by eight different national intelligence agencies, we offer you five years of legal immunity in return for Viktor Nikiforov’s arrest.”

Oh. _Oh_.

This was interesting. This was doable.

Katsuki Yuuri leaned forward, and those unfortunate officials who happened to be seated next to him stiffened. Unnecessarily, for Yuuri was unarmed and unthreatened, but he appreciated the flattery nonetheless.

“And what exactly does five years of immunity entail?” asked Yuuri.

“Five years of immunity means that you are free from legal pursuit in any of these eight countries for five years. This does not mean you are free to commit further crimes without prosecution for the next five years, Mister Katsuki. This means that, as long as you deliver us Viktor Nikiforov--alive, mind you, alive--you are free to do as you like, within the legal limits, without a bounty on your head.”

“Hm.” Katsuki Yuuri considered this. “That doesn’t seem as glamorous as you made it sound, I admit. Nor legal.”

The man opened his hands in a clear imitation of Yuuri’s earlier gesture. “It is what we offer. At the moment, your only other offer is a quiet execution in some Tokyo basement, and then your posthumous faith in us to treat your family fairly during their prosecution.”

Yuuri couldn't help it. He stood, too quickly, and he could see the majority of the room’s hearts leap into their throats.

“How _dare_ you threaten my family, how _dare_ you--” Obscenities in three languages flew from him, as well as horrifically detailed step-by-step threats of retribution. While in prison, Yuuri had had little to do besides gain muscle and practice several methods of meditation. Even rage had gotten boring after a while. He thought, mistakenly, that he had shed Viktor’s temper.

But Katsuki Yuuri had not been this angry in three years.

“Mister Katsuki, please sit down. Mister Katsuki, we will subdue you.”

“I don't care what you threaten me with, but if you _ever_ attempt to touch my family I will remove the spinal cords of every single person in this room and make you _eat them_. I promise you that--”

“Mister Katsuki, please--”

Spots in his vision. One of the guards had a firm grip on one of the pressure points in his neck. Surely it would be bad press to faint here. Reluctantly, and perhaps more accredited to the dizziness than his own self-restraint, Katsuki Yuuri sat down.

But he continued, pathetically: “My family has never had any hand in what I do. I haven't spoken to them in years. They don't deserve to be involved in this.”

“With all due respect, sir, you involved your family when you got involved in the drug trade yourself. You further incriminate them with every anonymous envelope of coke money you have delivered to your family home in Hasetsu. And we have given you a choice. The matter of your family’s public trial is based entirely upon your own discretion, Katsuki Yuuri.”

_Damn them._ Damn Yuuri too, for exposing his hand so earnestly. These vampires may as well have removed Yuuri’s heart and deposited it in a box for ransom. Yuuri may as well have cut it out willingly. How incredibly stupid, to let them know he cared so much about his estranged family.

He massaged his temples tiredly. He needed his glasses. Vanity was contagious, and Yuuri had contracted it during his years in Saint Petersburg. He hardly wore his glasses in public, and his vision had paid for it. His peace of mind had paid for it.

“What are the terms?” he said, finally. “If I accept, what are your damned rules?”

The man’s smug expression was a perfectly translated _glad you asked_. He said, “They're incredibly simple, actually, sir. You deliver us Viktor Nikiforov, alive and in full possession of the capabilities of speech, within the year, and we leave your family alone. We leave you alone for five more years, and then what occurs after this grace period depends on how well you can hide from us.”

Yuuri snorted. He was very good at hiding. Barcelona had been a fluke, with the odds unfairly stacked against him. With the right conditions, he could avoid arrest for much longer than five years.

“You allow us to give you a handler. Any harm that comes to such an agent will be inflicted doubly on your family in Hasetsu. If we suspect you have in any way broken the terms of this agreement, including but not limited to conspiring with the Plisetsky branch against us, this handler will kill you. In regards to your family in such a situation--well, there is no need to beat a dead horse, is there?”

No. Yuuri shook his head stiffly. There was not.

Katsuki Yuuri was no fool. There was no choice here, despite the illusion of one. Even if they weren’t twisting his arm, threatening him with a literal firing squad, there would be no real decision to be made. Yuuri either got out of prison and finally achieved the revenge he had been plotting in his Fuchū cell for three years, or his family was publically humiliated for his own actions. Yuuri might not be the perfect Japanese son, but he still retained enough shame to know that familial humiliation was simply not an option.

He schooled his features into some semblance of a neutral expression. He was livid. He was absolutely fucking murderous. But Katsuki Yuuri had plenty of experience lying. Calmly--primly, even--he conceded.

“I accept those terms.” He would not. He would never lick the boots of another council of self-satisfied Europeans again. But he could make them believe he would. Yuuri had plenty of experience groveling too.

“Hang on, hang on, hang on. I don't like this.” The Americans. Yuuri turned the full force of his best hateful glare on the two. Neither of them quailed. The man was speaking. “We’re just going to let him waltz back to Nikiforov with only one handler to make sure he doesn't turn on us? We’re going to take _Yuuri Katsuki_ on his word and expect him to turn over his boyfriend without complaint?”

Yuuri felt a muscle twitch in his jaw. To keep himself from standing, he pressed his forearms into the table edge hard enough to bruise. Above the heads of everyone seated at the table, he met Phichit Chulanont’s gaze again.

“Sir, I think you misunderstand my relationship with Viktor Nikiforov. The coverage of events of Barcelona was grossly inaccurate. Perhaps the news in America is limited to tabloid press, and so I won't begrudge you for your misconceptions.”

He set his jaw, and met the man’s eyes across the table. It was evident that the loathing he felt was mutual. Katsuki wondered what aspect of his person this man found the least favorable. He would do his best in the near future to make it the forefront of his personality.

Yuuri continued: “But please believe me, if it weren't for your apparent need for a living Nikiforov to torture for information, I would kill the man on sight. There are no emotional attachments left between us. Do not insult me by insinuating that I would _ever_ again--”

“Kneel for him?” There was a dangerous goading in his voice. Yuuri wondered if he _wanted_ him to kill him.

Sweetly, he smiled. It took every centimeter of his self control to do so. “Sir, between the two of us, it was not me that did the kneeling.”

Someone in their audience made a strangled noise that sounded dangerously like a laugh. Yuuri’s eyes flickered to Phichit Chulanont. The man’s expression dove suddenly into bored neutrality, but Yuuri had seen the incredulity alight in his eyes.

The eyes could not lie. Viktor had taught him that. (And Viktor’s eyes had always been the death of his falsehoods.)

Vindicated by the shadow of support, Yuuri allowed the moment to pass between them without comment. It was a secret now, and Phichit Chulanont would owe him in order to keep such fleeting comradery out of public and private gossip.

He settled back into his chair. Yuuri was good at letting people believe he was in control, even better at it than he was at actually being in control. The key to this was all body language.

“I assume I need to sign something?”

The unidentified, countryless man passed him a folder. Yuuri read the terms carefully, as he had been taught, to ensure he didn't sign his life away to anything surprising. The terms were more or less what the man had previously listed. Yuuri felt some mild distaste. He disliked transparency. It always seemed so sinister.

He signed the documents without a flourish, and passed them wordlessly along. “Is that all?”

Across from him, the military officer nodded gruffly. “That is all. Officer Chulanont will escort you to a hotel room, where you will both be monitored for the entire night. In the morning, we will make final arrangements for your travel to Saint Petersburg.”

So soon. Too soon. Yuuri felt another pang of anxiety. To conceal it, he leaned back further in his chair.

“I’ll need my things. Clothes, identification.” A gun. They were moronic if they believed he was letting them ship him anywhere in Russia without his pick from a weapons arsenal first. “I can pick up some of my things from Tokyo, if you won't let me leave the city. But I do need them.”

“Absolutely not!” someone cried. The American man. Yuuri inspected his cuticles and did not deign to look at him. He would get his way, one way or another. Threatening Chulanont at knifepoint began to strike Yuuri as an option.

“I’d also like to request a meal. Prison food is as terrible as everyone says, I regret to say.” He did not look up from his hands. “These aren't unreasonable demands.”

“You are in _no_ position to be making _demands_ , no matter how reasonable--”

Yuuri inclined an eyebrow at the military officer in front of him. He appeared to be in charge. At the very least, he was Japanese, and Yuuri felt that he would be the most likely to allow him what he wanted. Yuuri was very charming. And he was practically a national symbol at this point.

The man regarded him neutrally. He was old enough to be Yuuri’s father, a thought that brought with it another pang of unwanted emotion. Perhaps, after six years, Katsuki Yuuri missed his father.

Katsuki Yuuri stared back at the man, and his own expression was unreadable. It was not pathetic, and it was not smug either. It simply was.

Stiffly, the man nodded. He said, “Take him where you must, heavily guarded. His requests are not unreasonable.” This, for the Americans’ sakes, Yuuri was sure. His dipped his head in gratitude.

“Thank you,” Yuuri said quietly, and he did not protest when the guards made him stand and forced him to walk with his hands cuffed in front of him, nor when the Americans hissed foul things under their breath when he passed them.

Perhaps he was restrained and heavily guarded, and perhaps he was simply trading one imprisonment for the next, and perhaps he would be in Russia in a matter of days with no plan with which to save his own skin. Perhaps Viktor Nikiforov would kill him on sight, and Yuuri’s family would suffer the pain of his failure.

On the steps of Fuchū prison, Yuuri tilted his head back and closed his eyes. It was not yet noontime, and the sun was warm on his cheeks. Beneath his eyelids, his vision blazed red.

It was the first time Katsuki Yuuri had felt the sun on his face, as a free man, in three years. Perhaps this gift--sun, a breeze, the scent of late spring in the air--would bode him well.

But more likely it would not.

* * *

Phichit Chulanont preferred Katsuki Yuuri with his hands tied.

The thought warmed his cheeks as soon as he let it pass his mind, but it was not untrue. Without cuffs, Katsuki Yuuri was free to employ a wealth of different methods with which to kill him. Phichit did not like the mental picture of hands closing around his throat any more than he liked the latter image of his own face smashed in by an ex-yakuza operative’s fists. Any other possibility seemed equally, or perhaps more so, unpleasant. He did not entertain thoughts of the more gruesome methods.

So he kept his distance. It was painfully obvious that Katsuki Yuuri could tell. Phichit tried to pay this no mind.

He was driving a government issue automobile that Katsuki had glanced at in distaste before sliding into the passenger seat without asking. Phichit had looked about worriedly, but the action prompted no immediate response from the newly exchanged officers around him, and Katsuki was permitted to stay where his was. This had confined his guards to the back, which was both comical and concerning to Phichit.

Comical, because they were huge, and the little black Nissan looked like it could hardly fit normally proportioned men on a good day. Concerning, because if this was how easily Katsuki got his way, Phichit was going to have a hell of a time giving him any kind of orders when he had to.

Also concerning was the fact that Katsuki had removed his torn suit jacket and begun to roll up his sleeves, giving Phichit a clear view of the colorful ink crawling up his arms. He did his best not to look at it, but his eyes kept wandering back to stare.

Katsuki noticed. Phichit became aware of this when he caught his eyes on Katsuki’s sharp smile and blushed furiously. It took enormous effort to tear his gaze away, and Phichit had the creeping feeling that he was destined to be prey to this predator of a man. He kept his eyes on the road from then on.

After they had passed Fuchū’s walls, Phichit cleared his throat. “Where am I taking you? To pick up your things.”

Katsuki stared out the window. It was past cherry blossom season, and the bright excitement of Tokyo did not extend to Fuchū’s neighborhood. Phichit wondered what he could possibly be looking at, and what he could possibly be thinking of.

Perhaps it was best not to wonder.

“Katsuki Yuuri.”

“Hmm?” He turned to him, and Phichit found that if he concentrated hard enough, Katsuki’s face dissolved into anonymity. It was much easier to look at him when he did not look like the infamous mobster of the Tokyo papers.

“I asked you where I am taking you. To retrieve your things.”

“Oh.” He was perfectly polite again. Perfectly reserved. Phichit could not decide which Katsuki he trusted less. At least this version did not make him want to jump headfirst out of the moving vehicle.

Katsuki Yuuri said, “Kabukicho, if you would.”

Phichit blinked. “Kabukicho.”

Katsuki examined his cuticles. “Yes, Kabukicho. Will that be a problem?”

Phichit glanced into the rearview mirror. The guards’ faces were studiously impassive. One met his eyes in the mirror and shrugged.

_Kabukicho_. Phichit Chulanont hated his job. He cleared his throat. “No. No, I guess it won't be.”

“Wonderful.” Katsuki resumed his contemplative stare out the window, and he did not speak again until they reached the outskirts of the next neighborhood.

Kabukicho was the red light district. Phichit was not so bad at being a cop that he was afraid of a few brothels and strip clubs. What gave him pause was the type of people with whom Katsuki would associate in the red light district. He remembered vaguely from the papers that Kabukicho was where Katsuki had gotten his big break, so to speak. Kabukicho was where he had met Nikiforov, six years ago.

“Turn here.” Phichit started. He hadn’t realized Katsuki had been paying attention, nor that his eyes had been lingering on Phichit’s face for a long time.

He conceded. It was noontime, which meant that the neighborhood was nowhere near as seedy as Phichit had seen it before. He’d done some night shifts in Kabukicho, and he could attest to the way the neighborhood came alive after dark. The streets would be positively crawling with all manner of people who didn't wish to be seen in the daylight. Katsuki’s ilk might be among them.

“Left.” Phichit turned left. “Right.” He turned right. Occasionally, he glanced back at the officers behind him, but they did not protest to his taking street directions from a drug lord. “Stop here.”

“Here?” Phichit echoed. There was nothing here save for a forgotten, dying shrub and a dumpster. They were in the mouth of an alley. The pavements were empty.

Phichit Chulanont’s heart was in his mouth. It occurred to him finally that Katsuki Yuuri had directed him here to kill him. Phichit felt his eyes widen, and he gripped the steering wheel more tightly as his heart clattered against his ribs. How had he orchestrated this? Had he paid off the guards? Had the guards always been his? God, Phichit had been so _stupid_ \--

“Relax.” Was Katsuki laughing? He extricated himself carefully from the passenger side, stretched languidly. He left the door open, so Phichit could hear him speak. “I’m not going to kill you, Chulanont. But I’m not letting four Tokyo cops drop me off in--” He struck the Nissan softly, disdainfully, with the toe of his shoe. “--this thing ether. Minako would eviscerate me.”

_Oh_. Relief overwhelmed him. Phichit wretched the gear shift into park, scrambled from the driver's seat. “Well, I’ve still got to come with you. _Somebody_ does, at least, and--”

Katsuki’s eyes flickered dubiously over Phichit’s uniform and slid away in distaste. “Not dressed like that, you aren’t. I thought we didn't want everyone knowing I was the Japanese government’s new bitch?”

Phichit closed his eyes. He was right, however unnecessarily smug the comment had been. He couldn't exactly waltz into a yakuza safe house with Katsuki Yuuri while wearing a police officer’s uniform.

“Wait.” He dove for the Nissan’s trunk and pulled out his own backpack. He’d relocated the mess of his Fuchū locker into it before leaving the prison today. “I have other things--I’ve got--I’ve got this.”

In his hand, he clutched a blue sweater that he had not realized was emblazoned with the yellow M of Katsuki’s alma mater until he held it out to him. Katsuki raised an eyebrow--just one.

“Michigan?” he asked. Phichit was again struck by how strange words sounded in his mouth, regardless of their language. Katsuki Yuuri seemed to have no discernible accent, no ties to any place besides the kingdom he had built himself. The kingdom he’d lost.

Phichit stammered, “It’s--it’s my school. I went there.” Four years ago, which made him and Katsuki damn near brothers in arms. He wondered how this had never occurred to him before.

“What a coincidence.” Katsuki smiled joylessly. “So did I.”

“I know.” He didn't know why he said it, but it appeared to placate Katsuki Yuuri. He waved a dismissive hand at Phichit.

“Change. I’ll wait.”

Phichit changed. He caught his reflection in the Nissan’s rear window, and thought the American college graduate look was not entirely unflattering. Tokyo had sucked the life from him in recent years, and before his assignment as the martyred handler of a drug lord, he had been seriously considering returning to Thailand. In Thailand, he could be like the Phichit of four years ago. He could look like this--younger, less harried. Happier.

In the present, Phichit’s rational consciousness remarked that now he looked even less like he belonged next to Katsuki Yuuri. But at least he no longer looked like a parole officer completely out of his depth.

Katsuki appraised his transformation quickly and shrugged. “I suppose,” he said vaguely, and then he ushered Phichit onward.

Four blocks farther from where Phichit had parked the Nissan, Katsuki stopped in front of a shoddy old warehouse. It didn’t look like the headquarters of a dangerous sect of yakuza, nor like the home of a woman who would supposedly eviscerate Katsuki Yuuri for daring to travel in such tragic style as a 2013 Nissan. It just looked like a warehouse.

Phichit began, “Um--”

Katsuki said, “Are you still armed?” Phichit looked at him, disgruntled that he had assumed Phichit so idiotic as to forget his handgun with his change of clothes.

“Yes.” Katsuki looked doubtful, and so he repeated, “Yes. I’m armed.”

“Good,” said Katsuki, and he didn't spare Phichit another glance. He pushed open the metal security door suddenly, and where Phichit expected the shrill sound of a security alarm, there was nothing.

Almost nothing.

The minute click of a pistol’s safety echoed in the cavernous room. Above Katsuki’s head, Phichit could see a girl standing on a balcony, her arms braced against the industrial railing. She held a handgun, aimed more or less at Katsuki Yuuri’s temple.

“Name and business,” she demanded, and her voice distorted the image. Phichit couldn't reconcile her voice with her appearance, and he was no longer sure if she was a woman or a girl.

Calmly, the man in front of him said: “Katsuki Yuuri. Tell Minako I’m here to collect my things.”

“Katsuki Yuuri, my ass,” the creature said derisively, and she kept the handgun trained on the two of them when she threw her head back and yowled, “ _Minako!_ ”

Above her, on a separate balcony, a woman appeared. Phichit couldn’t see much of her in the shadow, but he could make out the severe line of her throat, a jaw, another dull black pistol.

“This asshole,” the creature below her gleefully announced, “This asshole says he’s _Katsuki Yuuri_.”

Another shadow fled from the part of her lips. Her mouth was as sharp as Katsuki’s had been. “Well, he certainly doesn't dress as well as Katsuki Yuuri.”

“I apologize for not keeping up on my dry cleaning. I've been in prison.”

The sharp mouth broke into a smile. “Yuuri. It’s you.”

“Minako,” Katsuki mimicked, friendly and genuine. “It’s me. Call off your dog.”

The girl below her was already stuffing her gun into a holster and melting into the shadows. “So sorry, Mister Katsuki. Terribly sorry. I didn't mean to offend--”

“Go,” Minako snapped, and the girl turned on her heel and fled. “Yuuri, you're a dumb son of a bitch.”

Katsuki Yuuri shrugged. There was something different about him yet again, something in the slope of his shoulders and the tilt of his head that Phichit hadn't seen before. He looked comfortable, but smaller too. Less likely to pull all the oxygen from every room he stepped into.

“I’d hoped for a more heartfelt greeting--”

“Oh, shut up. I’m still angry with you.” Katsuki stepped into the room, and Phichit followed. The inside of the building could not be reconciled with the outside. It looked something like a club, something like a ballroom, and something like a condemned building, depending on where one looked. It was empty.

Minako caught him looking, and she smiled grimly. “Perhaps not the height of business. Katsuki’s fault.”

“I can hardly be expected to run your business for you, especially from a cell in Fuchū--”

Minako ignored the protest. She gestured flippantly at Phichit. “You’ve got fleas, Katsuki. Government fleas. What exactly did you do?”

Phichit spluttered. “I--I’m--”

Katsuki silenced him with a look. “I’ll explain, if you let me. Get that gun off my face.”

Minako complied, and she jerked her head casually. “Come on up and explain, then. Bring your friend.”

Katsuki led him up a grand staircase that must have belonged to the ballroom part of the room. When he stepped into a room that may have been a lounge, or may have been an office, Phichit hesitated. Katsuki convinced him to follow with a sharp glance.

“Minako,” he said, quietly, and the Japanese woman smiled and stepped to him.

“Yuuri. It’s been a long time.”

Something tensed in the carry of Katsuki’s shoulders, in the cords of his neck, and Phichit could see even from behind how he vacillated.

“Minako, I--”

The woman embraced him, silencing whatever he had been about to say. Phichit watched in morbid interest at the way Katsuki reacted to this. It was not at all like he had expected.

For starters, he let her touch him. This wasn't even a simple allowance: he leaned into her like she leaned into him, and his face was hidden in her shoulder. His back strained with some unnamable tension, the trembling of his shoulders barely perceptible by way of the tight-fitting suit coat. This was undeniable emotion. This was Katsuki Yuuri, almost humanized.

And then it was over, and Phichit could not tell which of the two had broken it. Katsuki squared his shoulders, and when he sat in front of the desk it was with the languid grace he had exhibited since Phichit had met him this morning. Without turning to look at him, he gestured for Phichit to take a seat beside him.

Silently, Phichit did. Minako mirrored him.

Now that he could see her, Phichit noticed that Minako was a strange combination of Katsuki Yuuri’s most dangerous traits. She was older, though how much older Phichit could not discern from her lineless face and sharp eyes. Perhaps in her forties. Maybe fifties. She moved the same way Katsuki did, like a dancer, and every action was just as calculated as her protégé’s were. She definitely looked like someone who would gut Katsuki for leading the police to her door in an unfashionable car, and someone who would feel little remorse in the process.

As Phichit watched, she fixed the thick hair in her bun, and Katsuki mirrored her actions with a gentle, unconscious hand to brush aside his unstyled bangs. And Phichit Chulanont understood.

Minako had been Katsuki Yuuri’s teacher. She had been responsible for what Katsuki had become today, not Nikiforov. It was a shame that Nikiforov received all the credit, when this woman had been grooming Katsuki for bōryokudan involvement for years before a certain entanglement with a Russian mobster.

“Your things,” Minako said, “are where they have always been. You may recover them as soon as you've explained this--” She regarded Phichit with a slight tilt to her head. “To me. And Barcelona.”

“I don't want to talk about Barcelona,” Katsuki said, with a sharp edge to the words. Minako blinked.

“Unfortunate. I want to know.”

“Anything you want to know can be obtained from any news site in any language you’d like,” Katsuki snapped. “I’m not here to feed you gossip.”

“No, you're here because you want something from me, and you are well aware that I do not deliver for free.” Minako had matched his tone. Hers was somehow more threatening. “Don’t be petulant, Yuuri. It is not flattering.” She appraised him with a disdainful twist to her mouth. “Makes you look lovesick.”

Something snapped in Katsuki’s hand. Phichit hadn't noticed he was holding the pen until he had broken it. Black ink spurted through his fingers, flowed down his hand until it began to soak his shirt cuff. Katsuki paid it no mind.

“I’m getting my things with or without your blessing. Don’t do this, Minako.” Dangerous, perhaps, but pleading too. The image was something like that of a cornered animal.

Animals were most dangerous when trapped in a corner. Phichit held his breath.

But Katsuki Yuuri simply closed his eyes for a long moment, breathed a quiet sigh, and said, “I didn’t try to kill him, Minako.”

“You should have,” Minako said, almost gentle about it, and Katsuki’s eyes snapped open.

“No,” he said. There was no edge to his voice anymore. He sounded hollow. “You know I--I couldn't. That's what the papers said, but you know I couldn’t.”

Minako leaned back in her chair. Her hands remained folded. “But he tried to kill you.”

Katsuki didn't nod, didn't agree. Finally, he had noticed the ink ruining his shirt. Rather than anger, he regarded it with detached interest.

He said, “That’s not really what happened either.”

“Oh come _on_ , Yuuri. He shot you. He abandoned you for the cops. That sounds like trying to kill you to me.” Minako’s eyes flashed. “Don't tell me you still--”

“No.” His grip on the edge of the desk was furious. “No, Minako. I don’t.”

Minako nodded. Phichit finally released the breath he’d been holding earlier. “Understood.”

Katsuki Yuuri carded his hand through his hair, a nervous gesture. Whether he transferred any ink from his hand to his hair, Phichit couldn't discern. “Can we be done with this?”

“You’ve hardly told me anything.”

Katsuki held her gaze. Phichit thought the weight of that stare must have been unbearable. “That's all--that’s all I’m willing to give.”

“Fine. Coward.” She stood, stalked to the window that overlooked the rest of the club. “Who’s your shadow? Explain that, and I’ll let you go.”

She meant Phichit. Katsuki and Phichit glanced at one another silently, and Phichit was grounded by the lack of emotion in Katsuki’s expression. This, he thought, was easier. This was a Katsuki he could handle. This was a Katsuki whom he could compartmentalize into neat little boxes marked “vain” and “calculating” and “remorseless.”

Easier.

“Phichit Chulanont is my handler for the next year,” Katsuki told Minako. “I've been given an assignment. Almost like old times.”

Minako turned halfway to regard him, and then stopped. Instead of Katsuki, her gaze lingered on Phichit.

“He doesn't look like much,” said Minako. Katsuki smiled.

“He’s not. But the threat on the Katsuki family’s heads is.”

“Yuuri,” Minako said, and her voice was pitying. “I’m sorry--”

Katsuki apparently could not bear any more of her pity. He rushed on: “I have to find Nikiforov. That will be easy. I imagine he's in the same place he’s always been, surrounded by the same harem he’s always had. Minus me, of course.” A grim smile. There was no anger to it. There was nothing to it at all. “Then I have to arrest him. Or Mister Chulanont has to arrest him, perhaps. I’m fuzzy on the details.”

“You’re going to arrest Nikiforov in his own home. Surrounded by the entire Plisetsky branch. That’s your plan.”

“I’d very much like to get my space in his bed back and then one day kill him slowly, in front of Yuri Plisetsky, but yes,” Katsuki snapped. “I'm not stupid, Minako. This is going to take time.”

“It's going to take a miracle,” said Minako.

Katsuki stood. “Well, then it is very fortunate that I’m good at performing all types of miracles.”

* * *

In his old bedroom, Katsuki Yuuri recovered his things. Among them: a custom made suit he’d abandoned at Minako’s three and a half years ago that fit marginally better than his current attire, a Swiss handgun, the spare keys to a Mitsubishi Evo that was not his and as far as he was aware still resided in Russia, several sweaters, and his glasses, complete with an outdated prescription that was sure to give him a migraine. Three years without them had cost him the better portion of his vision already.

There were other things, smaller things, which he also pocketed. Two hundred thousand yen, a piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it in Cyrillic numerals. Matches, though he couldn't fathom why. The Japanese translation of _The Master and Margarita_ he left. It had been a gift. He’d already read it, annotated it, spilled tea on numerous pages. He didn't need it.

The kilogram of cocaine he also left. He regarded the bag with disdain, then tossed it at Minako. “Why on earth did you keep that? Sell it. I have no use for it.”

Minako shrugged. “You asked me to keep your things.”

“That's not really _mine_ ,” Yuuri said, annoyed, but he saw she left the bag where it was. Yuuri didn't touch it again either.

Phichit Chulanont was snooping. Yuuri saw him pick up the Bulgakov and flip through a few pages furtively. He let him believe he went unnoticed.

To Minako, Yuuri said, “Where’s Yuko? I’d like to say hello before we leave.”

Minako looked at him, then looked at her hands. “Yuko doesn't work with me anymore. She’s married.”

“Married?” Yuuri couldn't keep the incredulity from his voice. Minako nodded, then looked at him reproachfully.

“She’s Nishigori Yuko now. It seems more than one of my student have difficulty doing as I’ve taught them.”

Yuuri didn't miss the jab, but he didn't rise to the challenge either. The first tenant of Minako’s tutelage: no attachments, and no entanglements. Yuuri had broken that rule. Apparently so had Yuko.

“Let's hope it works out better for Yuko than I,” he said. He raised his head. “Where is she?”

“Kyoto. They run a yakuza club now.”

“In Kyoto?”

“Yes, Yuuri.” Minako sounded suddenly exhausted. “I hope she’s smarter than you about what kind of people she lets into her bed.”

Perhaps she intended to make Yuuri angry, but he was too busy thinking about Yuko running a mafia club in Kyoto. The concept was nearly comical.

In all honesty, Yuuri had not anticipated Yuko making it in the underground. She was too kind. When she and Yuuri were young, she’d been terrified of being a drug mule. She’d been good at dancing, at inviting rich white men to give her small fortunes in foreign currency, and she’d been good at being diminutive. Yuuri had been good at all that too. But Yuuri had also become proficient at cruelty, a concept Yuko never seemed to be able to grasp.

His file had been mistaken on the subject of how long Yuuri had been involved with the ninkyō dantai. He had been thirteen when he started, when he met Yuko and Minako and began his education in less than legal matters. He had been yakuza at college, and before. The training showed, and he wondered how anyone had ever mistaken him for anything else.

A sudden memory of Yuuri and Yuko, crammed into a Tokyo club bathroom, swallowing rubber pellets of cocaine to be trafficked to Shanghai. Yuuri had been sixteen. Yuko hadn't been much older. Yuko had cried. Yuuri had not.

Yuuri, it had always appeared to him, was made for this. Perhaps he had not always been good at it, and perhaps it had taken him a few more years to shed his conscience than others, but it had always seemed to him that he was made to be yakuza. He had not thought the same of Yuko.

“Give her my regards,” he said to Minako. Then: “Tell her I miss her.”

Minako nodded. She didn’t say anything else, even when she and Yuuri embraced and he made to leave with his things. He looked to Phichit Chulanont meaningfully. Hastily, the man closed Yuuri’s book and looked up too quickly to appear innocent. “I--”

Yuuri nodded. “Take it, if you want. It’s just going to mold here.”

Phichit hesitated. Yuuri wondered if he had seen the foreign script scrawled on the inside cover, and if he had divined what it meant. Then Yuuri decided he didn’t care.

He closed his eyes. The impending headache simply doubled its intensity, and he clenched his jaw. “Let's go. I’m done here.”

Phichit slipped the book beneath his arm. Yuuri did not miss this.

When they reached the doorway, Minako stepped forward, as if to say something. Yuuri paused, turned halfway. Minako said nothing.

Gently, Yuuri dipped his head. Acknowledgement. Whether it was a thank you or a goodbye or both or something altogether different, he did not know.

Minako bowed more deeply. Yuuri did not wait for her to say anything else. He left. He knew Minako watched him go.

He tried to care very little about this, too.

* * *

“Mister Katsuki? Mister Ka--Katsuki Yuuri.”

Yuuri had fallen asleep against the Nissan’s window. He did his best to look as if he’d meant to do it, but he hadn't. Yuuri didn't sleep in public, had never been comfortable sleeping with company. The vulnerability was too unsettling.

“Hm?” he murmured, regarding Phichit Chulanont with slit eyes which he hoped communicated displeasure at being woken and not embarrassment at having fallen asleep. He wasn't sure if he achieved such an effect. His thoughts were still muddy with sleep.

Phichit asked, “Did--did you want to get food? I can--I mean, we can just order room service if you’d like, considering…” His eyes drifted past Yuuri. The latter shifted his gaze to look at whatever was demanding Phichit’s attention.

The Nissan was idling on a curb. A few meters away, a valet waited uncertainly to retrieve the keys from Phichit and park the car. They were at the hotel. He had slept that long. Yuuri felt humiliation deep in the pit of his stomach.

Yuuri threw the passenger side door open with as much vitriol as his currently sleep-addled brain could transfer into nonverbal action. He began to stride up the walkway, and he head Phichit scrambling to follow, throwing the keys at the valet with a rushed apology. “Room service is fine,” Yuuri said, without turning. He had few intentions of eating anymore. He had fewer intentions of being awake within the next twenty minutes.

Room service would be fine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few fundamental notes first:  
> The yakuza go by several names, and which one is used largely depends on the allegiance of the speaker. They call themselves, among other things, the ninkyō dantai (means "chivalrous organizations"), but the govt generally asks the media to call them bōryokudan ("violence groups"). Yakuza is obviously used more often than the others by laymen and non-Japanese.
> 
> I did mess with the ages a bit in order to make the events prior to the start of the fic work. Thus Yuuri is 27 and Viktor is 29. This won't have any impact on the story except in practicality (29 is still pretty young to be running a mafia branch anyway.)
> 
> The title comes from a quote in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, "The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold." If you've never read it, please do consider it, because it's really peak old gay culture and was a big source of inspiration for this fic. Other inspiration came from Park Chan Wook's film The Handmaiden, which is really fucking good, and a few other things I can elaborate on as they become relevant, because I love them so.
> 
> I predict somewhere from thirteen to fifteen chapters? I'm not entirely sure about that number still, because I do have a lot planned for this. Will keep any updates posted.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Please don't hesitate to drop a comment or kudos if you believe one is due.
> 
> xx


	2. Lovesick

In Mikhail Bulgakov’s _The Master and Margarita_ , the devil took his vacation in Moscow. As a rule, Viktor Nikiforov held Mikhail Bulgakov’s vision in high regard, but he had always had this quarrel with his work.

The devil hadn't gone to Moscow.

The devil was in Saint Petersburg.

Viktor Nikiforov was twenty-nine, and he was the most powerful man in Russia. Being the most powerful man in Russia when one had not even reached his thirties yet was not always a forgiving job; hence, Viktor was at the moment drunk out of his fucking mind. It was not yet five o’clock.

There was a reason for this, of course, but Viktor did not feel much like sharing it with anyone else. Thus, when Christophe Giacometti called his cell and immediately began demanding where he was and why he was not in the same place as Giacometti, Viktor told him in no uncertain terms to fuck off. In fact, that was precisely the phrase he led the conversation with.

“Chris. Fuck off.” The words were heavy in his mouth, but no less satisfying than they would have been sober.

But Chris was not satisfied. “Viktor. _Christ._ The Italians are here, and Mila is already seething--” Chris said something low and French into the receiver that Viktor might have been able to understand sober. Drunk, the nuances of foreign language were lost on him. “I understand you’re in a shitty mood, but can’t you _please_ just show up? For _my_ sake, if not for the Italians, because I suspect Mila’s going to take this out on me.”

The Basquiat painting--an original, of course--hanging on the wall opposite Viktor was giving him a bit of vertigo. He looked away from it and said languidly into the phone, “I’d love to, Chris, but I’m afraid I’m in the process of getting very, _very_ drunk, so if you don’t mind--”

“ _Viktor_. It’s three in the afternoon. And it’s a Wednesday. Can’t you please pretend like you care about business matters for an hour? You’re making a _very--bad--impression_.” The last three words were spoken with some measure of strain, and Viktor had a perfect mental picture of young Mila Babicheva prying the phone from Giacometti’s fingers, eyes ablaze. She was mildly terrifying when irritated. Viktor appreciated mildly terrifying women.

Mila Babicheva’s rage was palpable over the phone. “Nikiforov, I swear to fucking _god_ if you don't drag your sorry ass over here in the next twenty minutes, I am going to remove your organs one by one and make you _eat_ them.”

Viktor drummed his fingers on the table. “Good afternoon to you too, Mila.”

“You _asshole_ , I can’t believe you're doing this to me. I organized this entire meeting, it was supposed to be my _beginning_ , and you’re not even here yet and you're ruining it--”

“I have faith you’ll do wonderfully on your own, Mila.” There was an edge to the words that was entirely incongruous with the slow, amused facade by which Viktor delivered them. “You're very charming.”

“ _Viktor--_ ”

Viktor hung up. He resumed his regularly scheduled wallowing with gusto.

Viktor Nikiforov looked like the type of man from whom one expected air-headed remarks on class relations or politics in the clubs and charming (and equally air-headed) platitudes at dinner parties. This was why people were always surprised when they met him for the first time to discover that Viktor Nikiforov was entirely what he looked like. Charming, yet empty-headed. Handsome, but feminine in a way that unnerved the more brutish of his Russian customers. Calculating only as far as the price of his Italian leather shoes was concerned, and leaving the rest of the work up to the people on his payroll.

Viktor liked projecting this particular aura: it was amusing to see the distaste curdle so readily in new acquaintances’ expressions, and even more amusing to know that they were incredibly, entirely wrong about him. Most amusing to see the disbelief when they realized too late that they had underestimated him, and that no surgeon, however talented, could extricate four bullets from the stomach with enough care to save the offender's life.

Part of Viktor had decided it might be useful to employ this device on the Italians, and this is what he would tell twenty-two-year-old upstart Mila Babicheva later, when she arrived still rabid about the unfortunate course of events at her summit.

The other part of Viktor was just really, really disinterested in spending this day of all days as anything but catatonically wasted.

Three years ago the devil of Saint Petersburg had made a remarkably stupid mistake. He was atoning for it now. The alcohol was simply intended to make that atonement slightly more bearable. Viktor couldn’t say if it was working.

The demon in the Basquiat work appeared to grin skeletally at him; Viktor avoided looking at the painting for a moment, and then felt his gaze drawn involuntarily back. Popovich had had the painting stolen last year--a remarkable forgery now resided in Milan, and Viktor had the original hanging in his sitting room. It had been eleven months, and he still couldn't decide whether he liked it or hated it. Regardless, it was a sickening display of inordinate wealth, and Viktor tended to like such displays.

But not today. Today there was only room for one devil in Viktor’s house, and the Basquiat demon was much too ugly for Viktor to allow it to replace him. Additionally, it was unnerving. Undoubtedly, he was very drunk, but he swore he saw the thing blink at him.

Such matters would have to be resolved.

With his scotch in one hand and his gun in the other, Viktor shot the canvas demon three times in the head. Each of the bullets punctured with a satisfying eruption of sound, and the canvas buckled and tore around the injuries.

Popovich would be incredibly angry. Viktor couldn't wait.

Placated, he attempted to set the scotch on the table beside the sofa and miscalculated the distance. The glass struck the floor but did not break, emptying its contents on the rug. Viktor couldn't bring himself to care. Perhaps it was a message to switch to something more potent, which was was he did.

Armed with something clear, tasteless, and incredibly alcoholic, the name of which Nikiforov couldn’t pronounce with the way the cognition-to-speech area of his brain was currently drowning in 190 proof near-gasoline, he returned to the sitting room. He found it marginally easier after imbibing further to ignore the way the assassinated Basquiat creation continued to survey the room, immortal.

A kick to his side woke him, some innumerable hours later. Viktor Nikiforov muttered something vicious that never translated into real speech, since his tongue appeared to be glued to the roof of his mouth. There was a knot in his neck that felt the size of a fist, and Viktor was certain if he opened his eyes, he’d vomit something corrosive onto the handmade rug that had cost him too much money in Kyrgyzstan.

“Jesus. You look dead.”

Viktor certainly felt dead. He heard Chris step gingerly around the spilled scotch, then ventured to open his eyes. Then his mouth.

“Jesus. Fuck.” He heard Chris laugh, once. He knelt to pick up the scotch glass, then the gun. Viktor had never put the safety back on after killing the Basquiat. Chris did this now.

“If I help you up, will you vomit on my shoes? Because I won’t be responsible for kicking you in the stomach if you do.”

“You're not very…” Viktor struggled to remember the word. “Sympathetic.”

“ _Sympathetic_.” Chris mimicked his accent and his heavy tongue. “ _You_ left me alone with Babicheva all day, and with Popovich all night. I have the right to be unsympathetic.”

Viktor winced. His head felt somewhat like it had been microwaved. “You’re being very loud.”

Chris snorted. He watched Viktor struggle to sit up without moving too fast, swing his legs gingerly over the edge of the sofa and brace his head in his hands. “So are we converting to alcoholism now?” Viktor appreciated the way he said _we_. Regardless of the stupid decision, Viktor could always count on Christophe Giacometti to follow him. “Or was this venture into the world of alcohol poisoning for a special occasion?”

Viktor looked at him simply. This was the only answer Chris needed. He muttered something under his breath that Viktor thought might have been French for _besotted_.

But Viktor could have been mistaken. He was not very good at French. Chris knew this, and it was oft used to his advantage.

In order to change the subject, Chris gestured behind him at the Basquiat. “Georgi’s going to kill you.”

“Georgi can--” Viktor had intended to say something mildly cruel and very explicit, but the word suddenly lurched beneath him and he had to do his best to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged inside his stomach. “ _Fuck_.”

Chris nodded, as if this reply was of interest to him. “Can he,” he remarked. Viktor blinked. Grimaced.

“I _will_ vomit on your shoes,” he threatened. Chris stepped primly out of his line of sight, and Viktor concentrated on the rug pattern and practiced his measured breathing.

After a moment, Chris’s voice came from directly underneath the Basquiat. Viktor dragged his gaze upwards to look at him. “Just to clarify, I have never slept with Popovich.” He grinned wickedly. “Though if you have, I suppose I can’t begrudge your choices in rebound material--”

“ _Chris_.” Viktor didn't know the time, but whatever it was was too early for this kind of conversation. And _Popovich_. Viktor was not that desperate. “Isn’t he engaged?”

“He was,” Chris said, emphasizing the tragedy of the affair with an irreverent shrug. “She thought better, I suppose.”

“Good for her.” Viktor closed his eyes, but that just made the pounding worse. “He has terrible taste in art.”

Chris smirked. “You know, I liked it. It reminded me of you.” That was what Viktor disliked about it. He didn't say so. “Unfortunate that you’ll have to burn the murder evidence now. The poor ozone.”

“You sound like--” Thoughts muddy with a hangover, Viktor had almost done the unthinkable. Mute, he met Chris’s gaze. The Swiss man raised his eyebrows, bemused.

 _Besotted_.

Fuck.

“I could kill you at any time,” Viktor reminded him, but the threat fell short because both men knew it was untrue. And because Viktor Nikiforov didn't look to be in a position to be killing anybody, ever, at the moment.

“Duly noted.” Chris stepped out from underneath the painting and regarded it with the air of someone who knew shit about art and was capable of making any kind of refined commentary on the subject. Viktor found such an attitude pretentious, mostly because he couldn't relate.

“What time--”

“Late. You lost an estimated day and a half, I’d say.”

Viktor said, “Jesus.” Giacometti laughed.

“Take a shower. Throw up. You'll feel better.” Chris gripped his arms and helped him off the sofa. The world spun unpleasantly. Viktor made a face. “I’m going to walk your dog. Be ready when I get back.”

“Where are we going?” _Take a shower. Throw up. You’ll feel better._ Viktor despised other people’s advice. He had half a mind to ignore it, but he knew Chris was right. Christophe Giacometti was always right when the issue was a matter of hedonism, or the cleanup after said hedonism.

Chris looked him closely in the face, perhaps making a judgement on whether or not he could trust Nikiforov not to drown himself in the shower if left alone. He seemed to find something satisfactory to convince him of this, because he stepped backwards and turned smartly on his heel.

“We’re going to pick your kid up from daycare, Nikiforov,” he said, already leaving. “And then we’re going to collect some debts.”

* * *

Katsuki Yuuri had been woken by a nightmare. It was four in the morning in Tokyo, according the glowing digital clock at his bedside, which meant he had three more hours to cram into another dream cycle before he’d be woken again by the man in the hotel bed next to him.

Yuuri didn't feel rather compelled to cram in another dream cycle before seven in the morning. He was content to struggle with the psychological implications of the ones he’d already had.

He stared at the ceiling. Phichit Chulanont had insisted on cuffing him to the bedpost during the night, probably worried Yuuri would try to kill him in his sleep, and Yuuri hadn't objected. He hadn't made even a single dry comment through the process either, a fact for which Phichit had seemed grateful. Yuuri had been exhausted by his first day of partial freedom, too exhausted to be entertaining. He’d sat on the bed while Phichit ordered room service and fidgeted, and he’d laid on his back and stared at the ceiling while Chulanont ate and continued to fidget. It had been a rather uneventful end to the day, and Yuuri hadn’t had the time to prepare himself for unconsciousness before it had crept up on him.

He had the same dream he’d had for years. As was the nature of dreams, it had not lost its novelty through time. Meaning it was still an altogether unpleasant experience.

This nightmare was this: he was in a church, and he was dying.

Not really dying perhaps, but he would be well on his way within the hour. He knew this, even before he began to die: Katsuki Yuuri was a tithe. A human sacrifice. And he almost accepted it.

In the nightmare, Katsuki Yuuri was not angry. Even when the close-range gunshot shattered the radius and ulna in his right arm, even when he began to feel the pain not as a distant and surprising entity but as the type of pain that made even people like Katsuki Yuuri very quickly wish they were dead, even when he felt hands on his face and words in his hair and the type of _goodbye_ that was very clearly a finality--even then Katsuki Yuuri was not angry.

This was what scared him most.

After that the nightmare had dissolved into a flurry of different images, as dream-Yuuri continued to die. Many of them were real memories repurposed as dream figments intended to torment him. A gun in his hand, the first man he had killed at seventeen, black black blood seeping into a floor grate, the stage at the Mikhailovsky Theater, hands in his hair, scissors as an improved weapon pressed to his neck, bedsheets and a body beneath him, _Anna Karenina_ read aloud while he dozed in a library, something silver.

In the dream, it was a relief when Yuuri died.

He was flat on his back, the only position he had found at all comfortable with his left arm twisted above his head, and when he felt the corners of his eyes burning he could do nothing about it. Quietly, he scowled. Perhaps sleep was a better option. With sleep, the only evidence of tears the next morning would be entangled eyelashes and a light embarrassed flush to his cheeks, neither of which Phichit Chulanont seemed observant enough to notice. Remaining awake, there was the persistence of memory to worry about. Yuuri couldn't abide the thought of a memory of crying in a cheap hotel room over things that had occurred years ago. How very maudlin. How very inconsistent with the public image Katsuki Yuuri had created for himself.

And so Yuuri did not so much as fall asleep but throw himself into it, and when he woke the next morning and Phichit asked how he was feeling, Yuuri said, “Wonderful,” with minimal bite to the words. Phichit appeared to believe him.

He was uncuffed and allowed to get ready without supervision this time, for which he was almost grateful. He was quite finished with strangers studying his every move by now. He wasted extra time showering, partially to annoy Chulanont and partially because this was his first shower in three years that was not in a communal prison bathroom, and even the cheap hotel shampoo and the water that could not decide whether it would remain hot or cold felt like a luxury now.

He dressed casually, in a black sweater that outside of his suits was one of the most expensive items of clothing Yuuri had ever bought, and then he opened the door and addressed Chulanont sitting sullenly on the bed.

“Do you have any scissors?”

“Scissors?” He sounded incredulous. Concerned. “Why would you want scissors?”

Yuuri leaned against the doorway and tipped his head back to survey at the ceiling. “I’m not going to kill you with them, if you're worried about that. That would be too messy.” He was in a surprisingly good mood that must have come with being clean. “I need to cut my hair.”

“Cut your hair?” Yuuri wondered if every conversation with Phichit Chulanont would play like a game of telephone. “You can do that?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Yuuri hissed, annoyed now. “I’m quite self-sufficient. Do you have scissors?”

Phichit stood and sifted through his things. He did have a pair of scissors. “Don’t you have people to cut your hair for you?”

“I _did_ , but I’m not in Russia anymore. And I wouldn’t trust a Russian anywhere near my throat with a razor now anyway.”

Phichit blinked. “I guess that’s reasonable.”

“Thank you for your approval,” Yuuri scoffed, and shut the door. He took extra time with his hair, as recompense for that agonizing conversation.

At breakfast, Katsuki Yuuri learned that he was dead.

It was in all the Tokyo papers, his face plastered on nearly every front page along with sensational titles like _Japanese Mob Boss Shot Dead During Escape Attempt_ , and _Nikiforov Protégé Killed at Fuchū Prison_ , and more succinctly, _Katsuki Yuuri, 27, Dead at Fuchū._

“I wish they’d consulted me before killing me off in all the papers,” Yuuri remarked casually, but he was angry. Very angry. “I was under the impression that me getting out of prison was a private matter.”

“According to the papers, you didn't get out,” Phichit reminded him, and Yuuri gave him an icy look. “And I doubt you have the authority to be consulted about anything anymore.”

“Thank you,” hissed Yuuri, but Phichit remained unfazed. He was right, in any case. Yuuri stared stormily out the cafe window. He had a tight grip on his teacup, but he had yet to drink anything.

“I suppose if all of Japan thinks I’m dead, nobody will be looking for me.”

“I think the news is a bit farther than Japan now.” Phichit showed him the screen of his phone. He had pulled up a news app in his native language, where the notorious Katsuki Yuuri was also breaking news. Yuuri’s face was the black and white background to looping Thai script that, presumably, publically announced his death.

Yuuri blinked, slowly. Then, he said, “Can I borrow your phone?”

Phichit passed his phone off to him a tad reluctantly, but Yuuri didn’t waste time with it. The early Russian news had also received his death announcement. Various anonymous photos of Katsuki and Nikiforov, partners in mass violent crime, had surfaced overnight. Yuuri stared at one that had been clearly taken at the Mikhailovsky. In it, Yuuri leaned too far into Viktor’s seat, a razor sharp smirk carved out of the line of his mouth. Over Yuuri’s head, Viktor was looking in an opposing direction, but his smile was just as dangerously secretive. They were a perfect match. Volatile, indescribable things. One less, now, as far as the media and the rest of the world was concerned.

But that was ridiculous, maudlin, incredibly _lovesick_. Katsuki and Nikiforov had been _one less_ for three years, one less since Barcelona. Katsuki and Nikiforov as a unit had ceased to exist when Viktor shot Yuuri in a church and left him to die, three years ago.

Yuuri was beginning to have very complicated feelings about the world knowing that he was dead. He handed Phichit's phone back to him and subsequently burned the roof of his mouth on his tea. Phichit patiently watched him swear, then began flicking through articles on his phone.

“Where did they get all these photos of you?” he asked, turning his phone to show Yuuri a candid of him getting into the backseat of a black 1969 Camaro. Yuuri hated that Camaro.

He shrugged. “People sell anonymous photos to the media all the time. I suppose pictures of me haven't been in demand for three years, but now that I’m dead--”

“Now everyone wants a piece of Katsuki Yuuri.” Phichit laughed. Yuuri wondered when he had gotten so bold.

Yuuri shrugged. “It seems that way.”

“I envy your popularity,” Phichit quipped.

Yuuri pursed his lips and finished his breakfast. “I’d trade, if you really wanted.”

* * *

 Chris hadn’t given Viktor much time to recover from his poor choices the night before. The ibuprofen he’d fed him steadily throughout the night had killed the headache, but elevated the desire to vomit again. Viktor may have taken his discomfort out on their debtors, and he’d broken his knuckles open on someone’s face. He couldn't remember whose. He couldn't remember much, besides the fact that he and Plisetsky had fought over it and Chris had uncharacteristically said nothing.

The blood from his hands had stained the sheets. Viktor had to peel the fabric from his knuckles; the blood had dried and become glued to the bed.

“Goddamn.” This was why he wore gloves. He’d had to replace the sheets now. They were from Florence. The woman who sold them was a wicked old bitch.

Though, perhaps he could lower his standards in this case. Perhaps he didn’t have to have handmade, seven hundred thread count sheets from Florence. But perhaps Viktor didn’t want to reevaluate his habit of gilded excess this early in the morning.

He had another appointment in the morning. By the time he’d eaten a hopeless breakfast--hopeless because Viktor couldn’t cook for himself, the refrigerator was still unstocked from last week, and the chef didn’t work Sunday mornings--Yakov was on his doorstep.

The appointment was a consultation with a crooked politician whose name Viktor needed constantly fed to him because he kept forgetting it. This wasn’t a testament to the man’s irrelevance--he was actually quite esteemed, with a reasonably impressive position in the Kremlin. Viktor just had a terrible memory for things about which he couldn't bring himself to care. For the life of him, he could not care about this man’s name.

“Have you heard?” Yakov asked in the Camaro, and the question was less blunt than was characteristic of him. Viktor was driving (he refused to let anyone besides himself and Giacometti drive the Camaro), and shook his head casually.

“Heard what?”

“Vitya.” The hesitance in Yakov’s voice compelled Viktor to look at him. The old man was nothing if not direct, at all times. “Where’s your phone?”

“I didn’t check it this morning--I was--” Still hungover, contemplating the state of his sheets, attempting to remember what he did last night that had made Yuri so angry with him. (In hindsight, it might not have been that much.) He frowned. “Why?”

“Stop the car.” Perplexed, Viktor stopped the car. “Let me drive.” Viktor began to protest. Good-naturedly.

“Yakov, it's not that I don’t have complete faith in your driving prowess, but this car--”

“Vitya.” Yakov looked at him simply. There was something earnest to his expression that Viktor had hardly ever seen before. Viktor let him drive.

Yakov handed him a newspaper. Viktor’s own face had made the front page. Beside him: Katsuki Yuuri. The heading read _Yuuri Katsuki Dead in Attempted Escape from Japanese Prison_.

Viktor’s first thought was that Yuuri would hate the Westernization of his name in his own obituary. It had always been a subject of consternation for him, in a harried sort of way that Viktor had found amusing. He did not find find it amusing now.

He read the article in silence. The _Rossiyskaya Gazeta_ was a distastefully groveling government paper, but it was trustworthy enough. This was not tabloid news. This was not speculation. Katsuki Yuuri was dead.

Viktor couldn't stop looking at his own face. Black and white and translated into a two-dimensional image on cheap paper, he was unfamiliar to himself. The picture had been taken at a distance, with a nice camera, and Viktor wondered who exactly had taken it. Who had sold this moment in time four years ago to the presses now for fast cash. Viktor would have them eviscerated.

Four years younger, the Viktor Nikiforov in the paper looked naive. His gaze drifted out beyond the cameraman, and he concealed what Viktor knew was a wicked smirk behind his hand. He was twenty-five, and he had just earned his first truly fearful moniker in the Russian papers: the Devil of Saint Petersburg.

Beside him, Katsuki Yuuri had lifted his chin to whisper something conspiratorial in Viktor’s ear. With his throat exposed, eyes narrowed, hair combed back from his face, he was the picture of elegant superiority. Beautifully cruel. That was what Viktor thought he was.

_Dead._

His hands, imperceptibly, had begun to shake. Viktor Nikiforov tore his cell phone from his breast pocket and called Christophe Giacometti.

He picked up immediately. “Viktor.”

“Chris. Cancel my appointment. The one with--with--” He snapped his fingers.

“Beskudnikov,” Chris supplied patiently.

“Yes, Beskudnikov. Cancel that.”

“Why can't you cancel it yourself?” Chris didn’t usually question orders. Viktor’s hands had begun to tremble enough to knock his phone against his ear. Anger rose within him.

“Because I fucking told _you_ to cancel it,” Viktor snapped venomously. Chris made a conciliatory noise.

“Of course. Can I ask why?”

“No.”

“Viktor--” Chris’ sigh was audible over the phone. “Viktor, are you okay? You can’t be missing all these meetings, it's going to start looking very bad--”

“I’m perfectly fine. Fuck off.”

Another sigh, this one heavier than the last. “I suppose you read the news then?”

Viktor hung up.

Katsuki Yuuri was dead. Viktor didn't know if he had a right to mourn or not. Probably not.

Next he called Yuri Plisetsky.

“Viktor. Fuck off.”

“I’ll be outside in ten minutes. Be ready or I’m dragging you out of the house by your throat.”

“What--”

Again, Viktor hung up.

Yakov was still driving. Midway between Viktor’s brief conversation with Yuri, he had redirected the Camaro’s course to the residence of the late older Plisetsky. Viktor did not thank him.

“Yakov,” Viktor said calmly. “I want to know who took this picture four years ago. And I want them brought to me. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Yakov said neutrally.

“Thank you, Yakov.”

Perhaps Viktor did not deserve, was not allowed to mourn. That was fine. He would direct his attention to other, more productive things.

* * *

“Explain this to me.”

“Explain what?” Yuuri was being petulant. He was not in the mood to be colluding with the snakes that were continuously making decisions about how Yuuri was going to do his job without consulting him.

“You’re angry that Nikiforov thinks you're dead. Explain that.” Yuuri had hoped to be done with the Americans. Unfortunately, they had been placed in charge of the logistics of his mission. Yuuri had considered demanding a Japanese representative, and then imagined his suggestion would only increase the number of foreign hacks given charge of his person. He had kept his mouth shut on the subject.

“No. _You_ explain why you thought killing me off in the media would be in any way beneficial to the job I’m expected to do.” He was livid. Yuuri had been angry often since getting out of prison. The rage felt pleasant after the emptiness that had settled for so long in the pit of his stomach.

The man looked irritable at having been questioned. He sighed, as if Katsuki Yuuri was stupid. “No one is expecting you now.”

“No one was expecting me before, when they thought I was alive!” Yuuri gripped the edge of the table. The Americans had insisted on him being cuffed to the table again. Yuuri wondered if an explicit testament to how much he hated having his hands bound would discourage the continuous process. He thought probably not. “The only justifiable reason to leading the world to thinking I’m dead is to make it easier for you to _really_ put a bullet in my head after I give you Nikiforov.”

And there it was. That was the truth, the heart of the matter. Yuuri knew it, had known it as soon as he’d signed his release papers. He would not survive on the government’s word, even if he fulfilled his end of the deal. One way or another, the world intended for Katsuki Yuuri to die.

Katsuki Yuuri did not intend to die. Not any time soon, not at all if he could manage it. Immortality had always seemed like a charming goal. He wasn't going to allow a few national governments to get in the way of such an aspiration.

“We don’t mean to kill you, Mister Katsuki, unless you don't follow orders.” The man sounded uneasy. This was enough for Yuuri. This was all he had wanted: to let them know he had not been fooled, and that he would reject any type of authority they attempted to foist on him.

Yuuri smiled. “I always follow orders.”

He was disappointed that Phichit Chulanont was currently getting debriefed in another room. Yuuri had hoped he would laugh at that.

The man glanced nervously at the woman. She was watching Yuuri with an indescribable expression which Yuuri found uncomfortable. He glared icily back, and the woman looked away.

Yuuri sighed. “Just put me on a damn plane,” he said tiredly. “I’ll get you Nikiforov. Just promise me I’ll never have to see either of you again.”

Slick, oily smile. The man said, “That can be arranged.”

Yuuri matched his sneer. “I’m glad.”

Something, a brush against his collarbone, the pinpoint of a needle, alerted Yuuri to the presence behind him. He lurched forward, but there was little place to go when one was handcuffed to a table, and someone stronger than he already had a firm grip on his shoulders. The needle slid in, quick and precise, and a liquid, cool feeling immediately took up residence in his veins.

Yuuri scowled. “That was unnecessary.” There was no point to being angry. At this point, anger would merely increase the perception that Yuuri wasn't in control here. Instead he settled on dry indifference.

The man smiled again. “Yes.” Yuuri had begun to find it difficult to focus on his face now. Shapes and colors seeped out of their respective boundaries, filling his vision with a variety of vague impressionist paintings.

Yuuri looked to his hands. Alternatively: he thought he looked to his hands, but his head was swimming now in such a nauseating manner that he wasn't sure quite where his hands were anymore. “I suppose you can uncuff me now,” he remarked, and then the anesthesia robbed him of speech and sight and he willingly gave up on consciousness entirely.

He woke on a private plane, and was rather impressed with his talent of avoiding the desire to vomit. He had never been comfortable flying, but he had not been conscious for takeoff and so he was feeling marginally better than usual about the airborne situation. In this way, perhaps the drugs had been a blessing.

This didn't mean he was going to be thankful for them.

No one was supervising him. He was uncuffed. Really, going to all the trouble of drugging him was beginning to seem marginally useless if they weren't going to seize the opportunity to put him under complete security surveillance.

Yuuri concentrated on the feeling in his legs before he stood, and was thus able to do so without stumbling. Gingerly, he picked his way across the aisle and slid into the empty seat next to Phichit Chulanont. The majority of the plane was vacant. It appeared that there was just Katsuki, Chulanont, and two or three faceless government bodies to account for. None of them seemed particularly interested in Katsuki Yuuri at the moment.

The movement beside him disturbed Chulanont from the mentally stimulating activity of staring out the window with headphones on, and he turned to glance at Yuuri.

“Oh. You’re up. They said it would be longer.”

This lukewarm reception irritated Yuuri more than other recent events had. He snapped, “Perhaps they didn't account for my tolerance for illegal substances when measuring out a dose.”

Phichit regarded him quietly, then looked back out the window. “You were supposed to consent to it. I assume you didn't.”

“I wasn't asked. Can I ask why the fuck it was even necessary?”

“It wasn't.” Phichit didn't seem particularly aggrieved by this confession. “Artistic liberty on the Americans’ behalf. You were microchipped. For GPS and all that.”

“I’m not a _cat_.” His past plan to be calm and reasonable, out the window. This temper of his was getting to be out of hand.

“No,” Phichit said. His headphones were still playing music, though he had discarded them around his neck. Something Thai and obnoxiously hip-hop in nature was pulsing from them. “You’re an international criminal, and we’re not taking chances with losing you.”

“We,” Yuuri echoed. He had forgotten briefly that Phichit was not on his side. The thought was mildly disconcerting.

“That’s what I said.” Chulanont regarded him curiously. “Are you okay? You look sick.”

“I’m fine,” Yuuri snapped, but he had just caught a glimpse of mountains out the window and the sight had sent his stomach plummeting. He was not, indeed, fine. “I need a drink.” He lurched out of his seat and made it to the bathroom before vomiting. Small mercies.

When Yuuri had been forced to travel by plane in the past, he’d dulled the edge of the anxiety with champagne. Sometimes lots of champagne. There was no such luxury available to him now. Now, he was sick, and he had witnesses.

“Nausea-inducing medication in the anesthetic,” Phichit offered helpfully when Yuuri had finished emptying his stomach. There hadn't been much to vacate. He’d had tea and miso for breakfast, and nothing the night before. Perhaps an empty stomach was at partial responsibility. “Possibly.”

It was indeed possible. Yuuri wouldn't put it past the Americans to do their damn best to humiliate him, even from a distance. But it was also possible that Katsuki Yuuri was simply not as tough as he’d led the world to believe either. He nodded wearily and said nothing else as he retired to his seat.

* * *

Yuri Plisetsky was waiting out front when Yakov and Viktor arrived. Perhaps in fear of being dragged out of the house by his throat, the kid was ready on time and less mouthy than usual--both traits which Viktor appreciated.

With him was Otabek Altin, who watched Yuri get in the Camaro and then slid quietly in beside him. Altin was a few years older than Yuri and his designated bodyguard, but Viktor had often lamented that Otabek would make a much better business heir than Yuri Plisetsky. Otabek knew how to follow orders. Otabek knew when to shut up. Otabek knew not to kick the back of the Camaro’s leather seats.

Without a word, Viktor shoved the newspaper into Plisetsky’s face.

“What the hell is this?”

Viktor said nothing. Behind him, there was the sound of a quiet intake of breath. Then, a lot of silence.

“Good riddance,” said Yuri Plisetsky, and tossed the paper onto Altin’s lap. “One less thing to worry about.”

There was a beat where nothing happened, and then Viktor Nikiforov exploded into colorfully explicit language. Yuri joined him, and the crescendo of angry Russian was enough to make Yakov roll down the windows. Viktor felt a perverse pleasure at happening bystanders being subjected to such an argument.

“At least have a little fucking respect for _once_ in your life--”

“You're such a moron, how can you not see this is good for us--”

“I don’t _celebrate_ death, you little brat, no matter whose--”

“You're kidding! What about yesterday then? Don't pretend that this is anything but you still lusting after--”

“This is why you’re sixteen and still being babysat! You have no _sense_ of what it takes to run a--”

“Fuck you! Fuck you! Get a new fucking boyfriend! Stop being so goddamn self-pitying--”

“Oh, shut the hell up, both of you!” Yakov had said it. Viktor shut up. After a moment, Yuri shut up. Yakov pointed viciously at Viktor. “ _You_ need to get a grip. There’s a difference between mourning and losing your mind, and I will _not_ watch you run us into the ground over a dead man.”

Throat tight, Viktor nodded. Yakov scowled. “Good. Yuri, Vitya’s right. You need to learn some fucking respect.” The scorn in his tone would have defeated a lesser adversary, but Yuri had enough scorn to match. He scoffed.

“Whatever.” This was punctuated with a well-placed kick to the back of the passenger seat, which set Viktor off again.

“Stop kicking my goddamn seat! Are you a child?”

“At least I’m not pining over someone who _ruined my life!_ ” The windows had gone up. Yakov pointedly turned up the radio.

Quietly, Viktor said, “That’s irrelevant. He saved yours.”

“The two don’t cancel out, Viktor.” Yuri took a shaky breath. Viktor recognized the cadence of his voice. He was about to cry. “I don't see why you’re so upset, anyway. You got him in prison in the first place. If anything, this is on you.”

Viktor blinked. He was right, of course. Despite his irritating flaws, Yuri had a tendency to be right about most matters of morality. (This, also, Viktor found irritating.)

“I know,” he said quietly. “I--I know.”

* * *

Arriving in Saint Petersburg added six hours to their day. Yuuri didn’t mind. He’d slept enough.

Phichit did mind, and he expressed his displeasure sullenly. It was also colder than Tokyo, and he minded this too.

“I already don’t like Russia,” he muttered, and Yuuri laughed.

“It’s not bad,” he consoled. He was feeling better now that he was on firm ground. “It's not Japan, but it's not bad.”

“Is it always cold?”

“It’s spring,” Yuuri said. “We’ll be here long enough for it to warm up.” He wondered if he’d live long enough to feel the seasons change. He wondered if Nikiforov would kill him on sight.

Probably not. Viktor liked theatrics, and if he intended to kill Yuuri, he would surely make an event of it. But perhaps he was not stupid enough to make the same mistake twice. Yuuri didn’t know him well enough anymore to make that judgment.

He took Phichit to dinner. A dangerous venture, since they were in Viktor’s city now, and Katsuki Yuuri’s face was currently plastered all over every Russian media outlet, but Yuuri hadn't eaten anything substantial in almost a day and a half. It was late by the time they’d landed at Pulkovo International, and the dreary sort of tourism Saint Petersburg usually boasted had been swapped for its native nightlife. It was almost like Tokyo. Not as pretty, or exciting, but almost.

Yuuri hadn’t missed this.

“Can you speak Russian?” he asked of Phichit.

He looked uneasy. “Um, a little. Not very much, I--”

“I’ll order for you then.”

“Um--”

“Don’t argue.”

Phichit didn't. Yuuri inquired what he liked, then ordered according to his preferences, and that was that. No arguing, no unnecessary attention, and no recognition in the face of their waiter.

Yuuri took a ragged breath. He could do this. Realistically, Viktor didn't own Petersburg any more than Yuuri owned Tokyo, and there was little to no chance of any of the Plisetsky family recognizing him here. He’d kept out of their usual circle of haunts for that reason.

“Can I ask you something?” Phichit said. “Just one question.”

Yuuri dipped his chin in allowance, but his eyes narrowed. Phichit fidgeted.

“Okay,” he said. “I'm just--just curious as to how a nightclub dancer becomes a mob boss at twenty-two.”

“Is that a question?” Yuuri drawled, and Phichit scowled.

“You know what I mean. How did you do it?”

Yuuri smirked. “I was a very good dancer.”

“That’s not a serious answer.”

Yuuri set down his fork. He folded his hands and looked across the table at Phichit Chulanont. “One thing your file got wrong, Mister Chulanont, is that I became _bōryokudan_ \--” He said the government’s term for his line of work with some degree of distaste. “--when I met Nikiforov after college. That’s inaccurate. I became bōryokudan when I was thirteen.”

“Thirteen,” Phichit repeated. He looked impressed. He looked-- _pitying_. Yuuri resented that. There was nothing in him to pity. He scowled.

“Minako taught me everything I know. Politics, drugs, men. Ballet.” He smiled at Phichit’s expression. It was probably not in his file that Yuuri knew ballet either. “I was already on my way to becoming a powerful force in Tokyo when I met Nikiforov. He just...sped the process along for me.”

Big breaks like Yuuri’s were hard to come by. When Viktor Nikiforov had walked into one of Minako’s clubs six years ago, everyone had wanted a drink, a dance, a private room and several thousand yen with him. Yuuri had won that lottery. He hadn't been certain if he’d wanted it then, and he sure as hell wasn't certain about it now. But it was his legacy.

“I feel like I need to defend my talents here, so I’ll tell you that I didn’t sleep with him when I met him. People always get that wrong. They always attribute my success to Nikiforov being a slut. I resent that.” He pursed his lips. “Not for Viktor’s sake, you know. I just don't want to go down in history with _slept with Viktor Nikiforov_ as my only footnote.”

Chulanont was looking at him curiously. Both meals were forgotten, cast aside in favor of gossip. Reverie. Whichever one preferred.

“What do you want, then?” The question was unexpected. Yuuri considered it.

“When I was thirteen, I wanted to provide for my family. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich either, and I wanted to help. When I was twenty, I wanted to be famous. Now…” Yuuri blinked. “Now, I’m not sure what I want. To get away with it all, I suppose.”

“I think that plan is already ruined,” Phichit said scathingly, and Yuuri laughed.

“I believe it is.”

Silence stretched between them. Katsuki Yuuri stared out at the street. Observing was the first step to becoming anonymous. Katsuki Yuuri was very good at being anonymous because he was very good at observing. The two were a set of skills one could not acquire without the other.

Phichit broke the silence again, with another inquiry. “What did you do last time you were here? What was it like?”

Yuuri regarded him neutrally. “That is more than one question.”

“I’m sorry?”

Yuuri sighed. “Last time I was in Saint Petersburg,” he said, without further perseverating, “I was Nikiforov’s second in command. Now I believe that position again belongs to Giacometti, as it did before I came along. Perhaps Babicheva. She’s young, pretty, and a snake. Viktor likes those types.”

Phichit raised an eyebrow, catching the implication that Katsuki Yuuri was also a young and pretty snake. Yuuri shrugged.

“I make no pretenses about myself, Mister Chulanont. I don’t pretend to be nice. I hope you don't ever mistake me for a good person.”

“That would be difficult to do,” Phichit replied. Yuuri smiled.

“You might be surprised.” He paused to sip his wine, lifting the glass in a mocking toast to Chulanont and his potential grisly fate, should he fall victim to such charms. Yuuri wondered if Phichit Chulanont realized his life was entirely in Katsuki Yuuri’s hands now that they were in Saint Petersburg. Probably not.

Silently, Phichit gestured for him to continue. Yuuri did.

“The last time I was in Petersburg, Yuri Plisetsky was thirteen. He had been kidnapped, was being held for ransom. As the heir to a famously rich organization like Nikiforov’s, he would be a top seller on the black market. Even as a kid. You remember that from the papers.”

Phichit nodded. Good. Yuuri did not feel like delving into the particulars of that tale any more than he felt like breaking his own fingers. His gaze again returned to the window.

“I knew what was going to happen, you know.” His voice had taken on a thick, distant affectation, and Yuuri knew it but could not prevent it. He tipped the glass, now still beside his plate, and registered that it was empty. Alcohol combined with so little food was a historically bad duo for Katsuki Yuuri. He wondered when in Fuchū he had grown so reckless.

“I knew it, and I didn't stop it. For Plisetsky’s sake, I suppose. He was just a kid, and unlike the rest of us, he hadn't asked for this kind of thing.” Yuuri sighed. “I suppose. That was what I was thinking. But really--really I was just lovesick.”

“Lovesick,” Phichit mumbled. Yuuri’s fingers curled around the stem of the wineglass, but he did not break it.

“Do you have to repeat every damned thing I say?” he snapped.

Phichit looked hastily down. “Sorry.”

“ _Sorry_.” Yuuri’s gaze drifted to the ceiling. His right arm ached. The unconscious memory of cool tile beneath his cheek, blood pooling beneath his shoulder and venturing up to well against his throat, heavy eyelids but an impossible refusal to close them. Receding footsteps that he could not so much as hear but feel in his temples, pressed hard against the ground. This was how Katsuki Yuuri died.

But it wasn't. Yuuri had to remind himself that it wasn't. This was how he ended up in Fuchū, but this was not how he died. These events had passed three years ago, and he was still here.

He was still here, and he was never drinking again. Alcohol made him too earnest. He pushed the glass away in distaste and finished his meal in silence. Phichit asked no further questions, and when it was time for Yuuri to pay he tossed several anonymous bills on the table and left without another word. Phichit had to hurry to catch up, and this fact at least was satisfying.

“In the morning, I’m finding Nikiforov.” Phichit was as tall as he was, and stalking down the street became less vindicating as the man began to outstride him. Yuuri slowed. “Don’t expect to keep up.”

Phichit looked back at him, then at the distance between them. Perhaps Yuuri had used a poor choice of words, but that gave Phichit no right to be smug about it. “I would never,” he promised ingratiatingly. Yuuri ignored the jab.

“Good. Stay out of my way for the next couple days, and I might be able to pull this off.”

* * *

Message from C Giacometti: _dinner tomorrow at nikiforov’s. be there._

Message from M Babicheva: _tell viktor to choke on that silver spoon of his. im busy tomorrow._

Message from C Giacometti: _mila_

Message from C Giacometti: _be reasonable._

Message from M Babicheva: _no. i have a meeting with crispino tomorrow and im not canceling._

Message from C Giacometti: _jesus christ mila. reschedule it. this is a bit more important than a fuck._

Message from M Babicheva: _doubtful. but ill consider it._

Message from C Giacometti: _no. be there. no excuses -viktor_

Message from C Giacometti: _how unfortunate._

Message from M Babicheva: _giacometti. you evil bastard._

Message from M Babicheva: _fine._

Message from M Babicheva: _ill be there._

Message from C Giacometti: _thank you._

Message from M Babicheva: _fucking lapdog_

* * *

The nightmares revisited.

The world was in a ruins around him. Yuuri knew this even though he could not see it, felt it intrinsically. The word was falling apart around him, and Katsuki Yuuri could not bring himself to care. This in itself was not unusual. Katsuki Yuuri was many things, but compassionate had not been included in a standard list of his personality traits for years.

What was unusual was the fact that Yuuri knew very well that the world was going to take him to hell with it, and he almost did not mind.

“Let’s go.” His own voice. Russian. This was a tired nightmare. Yet the sound of his own voice, lighter and made unfamiliar by another language, never failed to shock him. “I’m bored.”

“Bored?” Someone else’s voice. Incredulous. Also Russian. “How can you be _bored_?”

Yuuri closed his eyes. He was not bored. He was exhausted. “I want to get this over with.” A different connotation, that. This admittance suggested awareness, suggested guilt on the other party’s behalf. Yuuri noted how this made the other man shift, and sighed.

“Fine.” He matched Yuuri’s sigh. “Fine. But come here.” A gloved hand on Yuuri’s wrist. He always wore gloves when he was fighting. They were intended to protect his pretty hands, but they also delivered a sense of impersonality to everything he did. Yuuri hated to be touched while he was wearing them. He almost drew away.

He didn't want this.

“Yuuri.”

“ _What?_ ” Yuuri hissed, and then the gloves were in his hair, against the back of his neck, brushing against his throat, everywhere and nowhere at once. Starved for contact, for absolution, and intent on devouring him. Yuuri’s skin crawled.

He didn't want this.

Against Viktor Nikiforov’s mouth, Katsuki Yuuri said, “Don't fucking touch me with your gloves on.”

Viktor did not draw away, but he looked at him simply. He was too close for Yuuri to focus on his expression. Yuuri hoped his own clearly broadcast his disgust.

“Yuuri…” This halfway apology was not for Yuuri’s benefit. Yuuri did not fool himself into believing it was. Suddenly, eye contact was too much. Too intimate, and Yuuri could not bear it. He hooked his fingers into Viktor’s hair and pulled his mouth roughly against his.

The damned gloves. Yuuri shut his eyes against the feeling of them against his jaw, against everything but the purely physical feeling of another body against his. He felt dampness on his cheeks and wondered if the tears were a truthful memory or a fictitious machination. The distinction seemed suddenly important.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor murmured against his throat. Yuuri tipped his chin up further and did his best to ignore the whispered mantra. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m--”

“Viktor.” His own words fell into the other man’s hair. His breathing was unsteady. “Viktor, shut up.”

“I--”

“I said…” He closed his eyes. “Shut the fuck up.”

It was easier to forget the inevitable when he didn't speak. For a moment it was almost possible to completely ignore the circumstances and simply focus on the way his fingers curled into his shoulder, carving hidden bruises into the flesh. But--

The _damned_ gloves.

The gunshot jolted him awake, and Yuuri was spared the endless reliving of the following few hours. It took him a moment to realize he had sat up in bed, his cuffed wrist pulling painfully from the bedpost. Across the room, Phichit Chulanont was staring at him.

“Shit, man. Are you okay?” He sounded genuinely concerned for a beat, and then amusement crept back into his voice. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“I’m fine.” He was. He wasn't. Yuuri couldn't decide. His heart rattled his ribcage.

In the darkness, Phichit ventured, “Do you want to talk about it?” The invitation brought Yuuri to his senses, and he fell back against the mattress. He needed to control his fucking head. He was going to ruin this for himself before he even met Nikiforov again.

“Absolutely fucking not.” Phichit made a conciliatory noise. Yuuri heard him settle back into his pillows, and after several minutes, the steady breathing that meant he had fallen back asleep. Yuuri was afforded no such luxury. He lay awake until the sun rose over Viktor Nikiforov’s city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thank you so much to everyone who supported the first chapter so wonderfully last week. I had intentions to go back and reply to comments individually, but fear of seeming overbearing and also a fundamental inability to perform simple social tasks convinced me otherwise. Thank yall so much regardless. I really do appreciate it.
> 
> If you want a bit of background on the Bulgakov: I love this book to fucking pieces and would recommend it to anyone who wanted to get into super strange Russian lit (if that's ur thing). It's a Soviet era novel in which the devil goes to Moscow in order to reunite a writer (the master) with his old lover (Margarita), among other things. There's a talking cat who drinks vodka and carries a gun--which is possibly the most obnoxiously Russian thing you could imagine--a naked witch named Hella, some weird Bible fanfic, and lines like "'I challenge you to a duel!' screamed the cat, sailing over their heads on the swinging chandelier." It kind of inspired this fic in a lot of weird ways, and I'm going to use it for things in the future. Any non-canon names mentioned are shamelessly stolen from Russian lit too. Beskudnikov is a minor character in MaM, and I'll use some Dostoevsky later, bc Russian names will be the death of me if I don't rely on the experts.
> 
> Thank you again for reading! I predict the next chapter to be done and edited by next week.  
> xx


	3. First Blood

The Nikiforov house hadn't changed. Yuuri couldn't fathom why he had imagined it would. Not when Viktor himself didn't seem to have changed a bit.

He saw him leave the house around noon, Plisetsky trailing behind him. Yuri Plisetsky had changed. He wasn't thirteen anymore, and it showed in the angles of his face and his height and the permanent dissatisfied twist to his mouth.

Plisetsky had begun to make the papers in recent years. Yuuri had paid a guard to deliver him Russian newspapers every few weeks, and Plisetsky had been a common theme in them. Supposedly, he was stirring up quite a bit of trouble street racing without a license. He’d won local fame for spectacularly wrecking a Porsche last year at fifteen. Typical.

He better not have touched the Fisker.

Yuuri was parked in an anonymous looking rental a distance down the street. Phichit had insisted on coming, pleading an unshakable sense of duty that wouldn't leave Yuuri alone in any type of vehicle. Yuuri hadn’t made a fuss. He’d let Phichit along, on the terms that Yuuri was allowed to drive. And that Phichit didn't speak. This agreement was going as one might expect.

“That kid,” Phichit drawled, “looks like a handful.”

Yuuri yanked down the sun visor suddenly, giving Phichit a start. “He is,” Yuuri muttered. “Hates me, too.”

Phichit snorted. “But you're so personable.” Yuuri cut his eyes to him, but the man didn’t falter. He met Yuuri’s gaze comfortably. Yuuri decided maybe, maybe, he was beginning to like Phichit Chulanont.

“Why did you go to school in America?” Yuuri asked. “In Michigan, of all places?”

Phichit looked surprised. He blinked, then tilted back his head. “Skating. I had a coach in Detroit. I didn’t go to class very much, because I was busy with training. But I did enough to graduate.”

“Skating,” Yuuri repeated pensively. He couldn't envision it. “Were you any good?”

“I was very good.” He sounded affronted. “Internationally ranked as a junior. But it was expensive.” He shrugged. “I quit, and now I’m here.”

“A parole officer entirely out of his depth,” Yuuri said, bemused. “An interesting switch.”

“I majored in sports medicine. It was useful, and I was almost convinced I’d use it one day, but…”

“Here you are,” Yuuri said.

“Yeah.” There was finality to the word. Yuuri guessed Phichit was done talking about himself now. He hummed a thoughtful note. After a moment, Phichit prompted, “And you? What did you do?”

Yuuri waved a dismissive hand. “Minako sent us everywhere. I had the misfortune of getting sent to Michigan. She wanted me to focus on blending in, I suppose.” He shrugged. “It was miserable.”

“Four years of no criminal activity must have been agonizing for you,” Phichit remarked wryly. Yuuri laughed.

“Oh, I did plenty of illegal things,” he said. “University students love substance parties. I provided. I was quite popular, for that.” He wasn’t. Katsuki Yuuri had been shy and thus anonymous for four years, and the only reason people bothered learning his name was to satiate their occasional nagging coke fixes. Yuuri graduated with honors and a distinction among his peers for having broken an indebted junior’s wrist at a frat party when he was a sophomore. That was all.

But it was easier to say he was popular. That fit better with his current persona, he had decided.

Yuuri flicked up the sun visor. The black Camaro had left in the opposite direction minutes ago. Pursuing it would be a death sentence, as would loitering on Viktor’s street any longer. Yuuri had gathered all he needed to know: Viktor Nikiforov remained in charge, Yuri Plisetsky still stood to inherit the business, and Katsuki Yuuri was going to pay them both a visit tonight. There was nothing else to immediately be done. “Let’s go. I’m bored.”

* * *

 

Dinner at Nikiforov’s was an affair. It always was. If Viktor had to chose a favorite among his vices, he would have to go with his penchant for dramatics.

He had worked Plisetsky hard enough in the morning that the teenager had wisely elected to keep his mouth shut while Viktor had dealt with dinner plans. He had previously been sulking underneath the ruined Basquiat (Viktor had never had it discarded), but he had since wandered off the harass kitchen staff. Viktor hardly noted his absence. He was intentionally keeping himself busy with inane things, like wandering through the library and pulling every other book from the shelves. Calmly.

“You’re losing it.” He knew it. He did not appreciate it being pointed out.

“Mila. Please leave.”

“No.” Mila Babicheva was beautiful like a very carnivorous plant. She reminded Viktor of himself when he was twenty-two, and that thought in itself was enough to make her mildly terrifying.

She was not dressed for dinner at the Nikiforov estate. She looked like she was dressed for an eventful night in town. Apparently this constituted very sheer clothing. “I canceled my plans because you insisted I be here. Now you get to keep me.”

“Lucky me.”

“Yes.” She leaned against the doorframe and cast him a scornful look. The pile of books at his feet was silently accusatory. “You need a hobby.”

“Mila, I appreciate you cancelling your plans but--”

“You should. Crispino’s leaving Petersburg tomorrow. Her moron of a brother hardly lets her go anywhere with his _supervision_ , and I cancelled on her. To come bask in all this testosterone.”

“She’s very pretty.”

Mila looked at him for a very long time. “I know.”

Viktor sighed. “What would you like me to do, Mila?” He wasn't talking about Sara Crispino. Mila seemed to know it. She blinked back.

“For starters, stop destroying your library. Whoever has to reshelve all those books won't thank you.” Viktor knelt to gather a few novels in his arms, and then paused. He didn't feel very much like putting forth the effort to reshelve them. He was suddenly very, very exhausted. From the doorway, Mila sighed. “I'll help.”

“Thank you.” The words were quieter than he had intended. “Thank you, Mila.”

She shoved a few books irreverently back on the shelves. Viktor would have to get them reorganized regardless of her help. But he didn't intercede. “Don’t mention it. You look like a mess. Wanna get drunk tonight?”

Viktor shuddered. “Not particularly.” Sensory memories of copious amounts scotch and gin clawing their way back up his throat suddenly revisited him. He did not think he would be getting drunk for a very long time following that excursion.

Mila was nodding gravely. “I forgot. Chris told me you threw up on his shoes.”

“I did no such thing!” Several of the books slipped out of his arms and landed face-down and open on the floor. Mila bent to pick one up and smooth out the newly acquired tears in the pages.

She reconsidered. “Maybe Chris didn't tell me that. I might have imagined it while I was angry at you.”

Viktor sighed. “I’m sorry. For not coming.” Mila shrugged.

“Whatever. Most people we work with seem to think you're brainless anyway, and it always seems to work to your advantage eventually--”

“Thank you,” Viktor snapped, embittered. “Thanks.”

“I’m always here to help,” Mila said graciously. And she had kept his mind off other things, momentarily. Perhaps that was helping. “Are you sure you don't want to get drunk tonight? Only a little?”

He leaned against the shelf and dragged his hand down his face. “I’m sure.” Staring at the books littering the floor, he wasn’t. He could see the wreckage of other shelves from the corners of the aisles. A disaster. “You can invite Crispino, if you'd like.”

Mila snorted. “To witness this fiasco? I don't think so.” She inspected her cuticles dismissively. “But thank you. For offering.”

Viktor was perplexed. “Why is it going to be a fiasco?” It was just dinner. There were no ulterior motives this time. Mila just smiled, very sharply.

“It’s always a fiasco when you get yourself thinking, Nikiforov.”

It seemed like a dismissal, and it was. While Mila stalked upstairs to recover one of her suits (she left them everywhere, for convenience's sake, and god knew Viktor’s home was big enough for her to leave her things lying around) and change into something more business-appropriate, Viktor ventured to the dining room. Voices were already rising from around the table, though Viktor had not been alerted that the house staff had let anyone in. Such a breach of safety and common courtesy rankled within him.

“Does anyone really know why we’re wasting a Tuesday night here?”

“What else are you gonna be doing on a Tuesday night besides be here, Leroy?”

“I don't know. Not be at some fucking Russian’s beck and call for once, maybe?”

“I'm pretty certain that's the job description.” Someone laughed good-naturedly.

Jean-Jacques Leroy was a good fighter. He was not so good at filtering what went on in his head into what came out of his mouth. He made a frustrated sound. “This is just a control thing. He’s freaking out, and he wants all his ducks in a line so he can pretend he’s not. I don't want to be a part of it.”

“Then quit.” Someone else snickered. There was no quitting Viktor Nikiforov. There was disappearing, and dying, and that was it.

“I’m not _quitting_ , I’m just saying--”

“Please do.” Viktor leaned against the doorframe. “I’m intrigued about what further opinions you have to offer on my behavior, Leroy.”

A very audible English curse. Another concealed snicker. From his place at the midsection of the table, Yuri Plisetsky looked quickly down at his empty plate. His shoulders shook with laughter.

“I apologize, Viktor.” Leroy bobbed his head nervously. “I didn't mean to offend, I was just--just--it’s been a long week, sir.”

“It’s Tuesday,” Plisetsky reminded him helpfully. Beside him, Leo de la Iglesia bit his hand to keep from laughing. Viktor almost allowed himself to smile. But he did not.

“Completely understandable.” Viktor waved a dismissive hand. “If you’d rather not spend your evening with us, you're welcome to help the kitchen with washing dishes.”

“I--um--no thank you, sir. I’m alright.”

Viktor frowned, displeased. “Hmm. Then perhaps you would be better suited to maintaining security for the night.”

“I--”

“It's not a suggestion. Go.”

“Yes, sir.” He bobbed his head again, achingly servile, and left.

“Malcontents in the ranks,” Mila said quietly, just loud enough for Viktor to hear. A light hand between his shoulder blades announced her proximity. “You used to be a king.”

“Mila.” _Please_. Perhaps there was a time for Mila’s sense of humor and her tactile habits, but the time was not now. Not when Viktor was currently wound as tightly as this.

“I brought you this.” Mila pressed the thin stem of a martini glass into his hand. “Made it myself.”

“I said--”

“You at least need to _look_ like you're enjoying yourself, friend.” She broke away from him, her fingers trailing along his shoulder and her voice rising playfully in volume. “Vodka helps.”

To placate her, Viktor took a small sip. Despite its demure appearance, the drink was one part vodka and zero parts anything else. He should have known. Mila didn't do anything halfway, and that included her mixed drinks.

Mila smiled at the barely discernible twist to his mouth that meant he did not like her gift. Of course, she had not intended for him to like it. “I’m going to find Chris. Would you like to come?”

“Please.” He did not know what to do with the martini. After a pause, he set it at his place at the table and followed Mila into the next room.

“We’re starting,” Mila announced grandiosely to the numerous occupants of the sitting room. “Giacometti, you’re wanted in particular.”

“I’m flattered.” Languidly, Chris rose from the sofa, made knowing eye contact with Viktor across the room. His expression sharpened, and he was between Viktor and Mila within moments.

“Doing alright?” Chris said lowly. He dipped his head indiscernibly toward Viktor. “Mila being herself?”

“I am a pleasure to have for company, Giacometti,” Mila said at the same decibel level. Her smirk was tight. They were always doing this lately, always fussing. Viktor wondered if they had forgotten that he was in charge, and not the other way around. “But no, he’s not doing alright.”

“I can speak for myself,” Viktor hissed. “And I am fine. Perfectly fine.”

“If this is a public display of power, Nikiforov, you need to be a bit more than fine.” Viktor wondered when Chris began to side with Mila Babicheva on these things.

“Should have punished Leroy more,” Mila sang from where she had slipped behind him and taken her rightful place at Viktor’s left. Her fingers tightened around his elbow. “You're looking weak.”

Viktor wrenched his arm from her grip. The move was not subtle. “I’m fantastic. Is that acceptable?”

“Not unless you mean it.”

“For _god’s_ sake--”

“Viktor. You’ve assassinated the Basquiat.” Salvation was twenty-seven and had his feet irreverently propped up on Viktor’s sofa. Georgi Popovich. “Why the hell would you do that?”

Viktor’s smile was easier now. Popovich he could deal with. Relief flooded him. “Because it was fucking ugly, Georgi.”

“That painting costs millions of American dollars. And you ruined it.”

“I suppose it's a good thing you didn't pay for it then, isn't it?”

“Jesus.” Mila was lighthearted at his side again. She did not appear to bear Viktor any immediate grudge for removing her hand from his arm. “Can we eat before I have to witness this?”

“Please.” Viktor turned on his heel and stalked into the dining room. Silently, Chris followed and sat at his right hand. Mila, unbidden, took Viktor’s left. She did not speak.

Once seated, Georgi began anew. “That was a gift.”

“I’m flattered you had a famous painting stolen from Milan for me, but that does not rectify the fact that it's incredibly hideous,” said Viktor.

“It’s a _Basquiat_ , Nikiforov,” was the exasperated reply. "It's supposed to be ugly." Viktor was momentarily distracted as the first course arrived.

“Don't see the appeal,” he said boredly. “Commission a new one.”

Georgi was apoplectic. “I--you--I can't _commission_ another one! Jesus! He’s dead!”

“Unfortunate.” Viktor sipped his horrible martini. His and Georgi’s was not the only conversation taking place at the table, but it was certainly the loudest. Popovich had a knack for that. “Acquire a new taste in art. A better one this time, perhaps.”

“ _Viktor--_ ”

“Goddamn, Georgi, can you shut up for a minute?” Yuri Plisetsky had his elbows on the table and hadn’t touched his food. He seemed to have no intention of cooperating with Viktor’s wishes for a fiasco-less night anymore. He drawled, “It’s a damned painting. Get a girlfriend.”

“Yuri,” Viktor snapped. “Your opinion wasn't requested.” Yuri rolled his eyes. At his right, Otabek Altin’s jaw tightened in exasperation. Conversation had ceased. All eyes were on Viktor and his dispassionate, sullen heir.

“Whatever.” Yuri pushed his place setting away from him and farther up the table. “This is bullshit.”

Mila Babicheva sipped her drink demurely. She met Viktor’s eyes over the rim of her glass and mouthed the word _fiasco_.

Viktor had the kitchen make him another drink.

* * *

 

Yuuri had done plenty of questionable, criminal, and dangerous things in his lifetime. For some reason, the prospect of encountering Viktor Nikiforov tonight terrified him more than any of these past endeavors.

“Do you always look like you're going to throw up? I must have missed that in your picture in the papers.” Chulanont was sprawled on the bed, flat on his back. His head flopped over the edge of the mattress so he could scrutinize Yuuri from an upside down angle too. Perhaps he would discern something new that way.

“I don't look like I’m going to throw up,” Yuuri corrected bitterly. His fingers ventured up his collar through muscle memory, closing the buttons while he met Phichit’s eyes in the mirror. The added challenge of reimagining his face right side up so Yuuri could decide whether Phichit was being indecently comfortable in his presence made Yuuri’s head ache. Perhaps he _was_ going to be sick.

Irritably, he removed his glasses from the bedside table and jammed them on his face. Slightly better. At least things were in focus now.

“You do,” Phichit was saying. “The glasses are cute though.”

“Do you ever stop talking? My god.” Yuuri felt the color rush to his face and stepped away from the mirror so Phichit could not witness it. This was new. Embarrassment was an old device Yuuri had not missed, and was not pleased to see revisit.

“I don't think so.”

“Fantastic. Well, I'd really appreciate if you shut up.” No venom to the words. Resignation. Phichit smiled.

“Since you asked so nicely.”

Katsuki Yuuri didn't have to ask nicely. He suggested that things were done and arrangements were made, and they were done and made. There was no _please_ and _thank you_ involved. The constant reminder that Phichit Chulanont would not take Yuuri’s orders any more than any of the less corruptible guards in Fuchū had was irritating.

In this way, interacting with Phichit Chulanont was exhausting.

Yuuri sighed. “ _Please_.”

Upside down on the bed, it was difficult to see if Phichit nodded. But he fell silent.

It was short-lived.

“I’m driving you there.”

Yuuri had stalked to the bathroom to tame his hair. After three years unstyled and ignored, it had taken a disliking to pomade and a comb. “You are not.”

“Well, I’m definitely not giving you the car keys to do whatever you’d like with,” Phichit countered.

“You are not driving. You are staying here.”

He could hear Phichit mimicking his words from the other room. His jaw tightened, and Phichit said, “Last time I checked, you're still not a free man. You will take orders.” His tone had become cool, rather like Yuuri’s. “ _My_ orders, if I give them.”

The smack of the comb against the faucet spoke for him. “Do _not_ speak to me like that _ever_ again.”

“Then don’t forgot who’s in charge here,” Phichit snapped. He was standing in the doorway now. Yuuri could see his face reflected in the mirror beside him own. He looked very young, and very inexperienced.

It would be very, very easier for Yuuri to kill him.

Instead, Katsuki Yuuri took a breath. His narrowed eyes met Phichit Chulanont’s once in the mirror again, and then he closed them.

He said softly, “Don’t fool yourself, Mister Chulanont. You may have gotten braver, but you are still incredibly underqualified.” Yuuri opened his eyes and turned on his heel until he was centimeters from the younger man’s face. “This is not Fuchū. And you can't even speak Russian.” He drove his shoulder into Phichit’s meaningfully, and made to shove him out of the doorway. Chulanont stumbled.

“Watch your step.”

He was halfway to the door, rental car keys in hand, when Phichit spoke again.

“You forgot to take off your glasses.” Yuuri clenched his teeth and lay one open palm on the door.

“I need them to see. I need to see to drive.”

“Well.” The soft sound of compressing mattress springs betrayed Phichit’s location. “I'd advise taking them off before you confront Nikiforov.” His tone was saccharine. “You don't look nearly as threatening as he does with them on.”

Yuuri’s open hand on the door curled into a fist. “If you _insist_ ,” he growled. “Any other advice?”

“Don't fuck up?” Phichit suggested. “And call me if you make it through the night.” The government-issued, brand new cell phone Yuuri had received upon his agreement with the Fuchū ambassadors was heavy in his pocket. A reminder.

“Don’t worry.” Yuuri opened the door. Forcefully. “If I fuck up, I’ll be sure to drag you to hell with me.”

The temperature had dropped since the sun had set. Saint Petersburg was cold and strangely still in the dark. Even the nightlife seemed subdued, something out of a blurry film rather than reality.

In contrast, the Nikiforov estate was in full-color sharpness up on the hill. Viktor Nikiforov’s enlivening touch, undoubtedly.

Yuuri had left the rental car in a parking garage halfway there, and called a cab for the remainder of the distance. It would do no good for the Plisetskys to find an unclaimed rental in the vicinity during their search of the premises after Katsuki Yuuri’s apparent reincarnation. Questions Yuuri would not be able to answer would arise.

“Where are you going?” the cab driver asked gruffly when Katsuki Yuuri slipped into the back seat. The back of a taxi was always so anonymous. Yuuri appreciated the shadows that fell over his face from the buildings above. Moonlight illuminated only thin slats of his features, and nothing incriminating.

Yuuri gave the Nikiforov address from memory.

“Absolutely not.” The driver had not pulled away from the curb. His principal unfriendliness had become something crueller. The cab reeked of cigarette smoke. Yuuri lamented his suit. “I don't go near that hellhole. Why you wanna go to a place like that anyway?”

“Business,” Katsuki Yuuri said simply, and the man glanced at him through the rearview. No recognition dawned on his face. Of course not. Katsuki Yuuri was dead.

“ _Business_ , my ass. You wanna get shot on sight, not my problem. But get a different cab.”

“Nikiforov shoots cab drivers on sight now? That strikes me as unlikely.”

“I don't care _what_ that fucker does!” the driver roared. “I’m telling you I’m not driving you there!”

Silence drew between them. Yuuri let the quiet become oppressive. The man fiddled awkwardly with his hands.

“Seventeen thousand rubles might convince you differently,” Yuuri drawled, disinterested. This was becoming rather inconvenient. He contemplated the benefits of shooting the driver and driving his damn self to Nikiforov’s, but quickly deemed it unnecessary dirty work. By that time there was no need. Money was a miraculous motivator.

“Seventeen thousand rubles for a fifteen minute cab?” Greed outshone doubt. The driver pretended to vacillate, then conceded. “Fine. Seventeen thousand. Up front.” A bloated hand pushed through the glass window, and Yuuri folded a small amount of bills into the man’s palm. Meager cash, but enough to convince a chain-smoking cab driver on a night shift.

The ride was silent. On two occasions, Yuuri motivated the man to drive faster by slipping wads of thousand ruble notes through the retractable glass divide. The man gave no thanks but for a dismissive wave as he stuffed the cash into his coat.

A block away, Yuuri said, “Here is fine.” When the cab didn't stop, he said, “Here. Now.” The cab stopped. Yuuri gave a dispassionate thanks.

“Four thousand rubles,” the driver said.

“Excuse me?”

“Four thousand for my silence.”

This was not altogether unexpected, but it was tiresome. Yuuri laughed. “Silence over what? I paid you for a cab. Who’s going to give a shit about what you say I did?”

“Four thousand.” This was unnecessary. Yuuri again contemplated killing him.

“You’re pushing your luck,” Yuuri said dangerously. “I just paid you a full day’s earnings for fifteen minutes in your shitty cab. Now leave.”

“Yuuri Katsuki.” Yuuri pursed his lips. Perhaps the indifference over large sums of money had exposed him. Perhaps his destination had. Perhaps it was just a lucky guess. Either way, he disliked these turn of events.

“I’m afraid you have the wrong person,” he said calmly.

“I don't.” The driver’s tone was viciously gleeful. “You’re Yuuri Katsuki. I recognize you from the news.”

“My name is Katsuki Yuuri.” Yuuri kicked open the cab door and stepped out. “At least fucking say it right.” He began to walk away. On the pavement, the click of a pistol’s safety gave him pause. Of course. Yuuri hated Russians. They were always so damn combative.

Instead of negotiations, Yuuri barked a laugh. “That’s incredibly stupid.”

“Four thousand rubles. Or I sell news that you're alive to every news station between here and Moscow.”

“Oh?” Yuuri was tired of Petersburg already. He tried not to grind his teeth in irritation. “And who is going to believe a cab driver that he ferried Katsuki Yuuri to Nikiforov’s estate? Katsuki Yuuri’s dead. And he didn't take cabs even when he was alive.”

“You're right here.” A brilliant analysis. Award-winning. Yuuri thought to comment on this, then thought better with the pistol pointed at his chest.

Instead, Katsuki Yuuri sighed. “You really should have had the foresight to realize that this wasn’t going to work. You could have taken your twenty-four thousand and left.”

It took Katsuki an estimated six seconds to disarm the driver, and another one-point-five to turn the weapon on him. Two for the reality of the situation to dawn on the man.

He began to sweat, and to babble. Rather unflatteringly. “I--I--I’ll go. I’ll go, and I won't say anything. I promise. Nobody would believe me anyway--here, here, take your money, I don't want it--”

It was this, the suggestion that Katsuki Yuuri’s anger was over rubles instead of his own integrity as a criminal, that Yuuri found most insulting. He fired three unsilenced rounds into the cab driver’s chest. Paper rubles fluttered out of his jacket and fell harmlessly into the dead man’s lap.

Yuuri had an estimated three minutes to get to Nikiforov before they found him first. Shooting a man on his street was not incredibly subtle. But Yuuri would not be brought to Viktor on anything but his own terms.

It was with this intention that Katsuki Yuuri encountered JJ Leroy outside the wrought iron gates and presented his empty hands for inspection.

“JJ,” Yuuri greeted conversationally. “What did you do to piss him off so much you’re outside on this cold night?”

“Jesus Christ.” Was his voice quiet so recognizable? Yuuri decided it was not, then remembered that he hadn’t given Leroy very much of a warning of his presence before speaking. Yuuri had grown accustomed to being invisible in recent years. He moved quietly, spoke lowly, and gave no indication of how terrified he was quickly becoming.

Smiling wryly, Katsuki Yuuri said, “Not quite. But I’m flattered.”

“Who the fuck are you? Fuck. I didn’t even _hear_ you--”

“That’s forgivable, Leroy. Well, by me, perhaps. Viktor might have something to say about lax security, so maybe we’ll keep you sleeping on the job a secret, yes?”

“Jesus.” While speaking, Yuuri had stepped into a shred of moonlight to move things along. Seeing was believing, after all, and it was simpler to show his face than to claim a dead man’s identity in the dark. “Katsuki? _Jesus_.”

Yuuri turned out his palms humbly. “In the flesh.”

“Jesus. You’re _dead_.”

“Clearly I’m not,” Yuuri snapped. “And I’d like to have a few words with Viktor on this subject so if you’d _please_ just pat me down and get me out of the cold--”

Leroy perseverated. “I--I can’t just let you inside--”

“Would you rather I killed you out here and let myself in?” Yuuri demanded. It was too damn cold and too damn late for niceties.

“Obviously not,” Leroy snapped. “But I’m not getting eviscerated for letting you just walk in there and kill him.”

“Then please,” Yuuri closed his eyes. “By all means, take the gun, Leroy, if it makes you feel better. Please be quick about it.”

* * *

 

Babicheva was doing her damned best to get Viktor drunk. Such a well-intentioned and poorly-executed plan gave Viktor mixed feelings. By the third martini she placed beside his cutlery, Viktor was efficiently buzzed and unwound enough to cut her a dark look.

“You’re not being subtle,” he hissed. “Stop.”

Mila was unimpressed. She smiled. She, too, was teetering on inebriation. “You can stop drinking them any time you’d like, Viktor.”

This was true, and it angered him more than he’d like to admit. His poor impulse control was also a sore topic of discussion. Sullenly, he directed his attention to Chris on his right.

“I’m not having fun,” he announced petulantly. He kept his voice low. He was buzzed, not stupid, and yet Chris cast him a concerned look.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and Viktor rolled his eyes.

“Perfectly fine.” Debatable. He dipped his head at Mila’s bastardization of a martini. “Do you want that? Mila’s trying to get me drunk.”

“I’m doing no such thing--” Mila protested goodnaturedly, but Chris took the glass regardless. Viktor was grateful.

Somewhere down the table, young de la Iglesia had started a wildly embellished tale about a car chase in which he’d participated in Miami. Viktor listened with polite interest, then felt his attention wander. Beside de la Iglesia, Yuri Plisetsky was sulking. Inexorably and inexplicably, Viktor felt the need to dismiss Plisetsky from the table. For Viktor’s own sake, surely. A sulking Yuri Plisetsky put Viktor Nikiforov in a bad mood.

His phone had begun to buzz silently in his jacket; Viktor felt the movement against his chest. He ignored the call. Anybody of import was currently sitting at Viktor’s table. Anybody outside of this inner circle could reach him in the morning.

His phone stopped its buzzing, and then picked it up again. Chris looked at him again with concern, and his hand turned over subtly against the tablecloth. After a pause Viktor nodded, and reached inside his jacket to hand Chris his phone.

Chris answered the call without regard for caller ID, rising from the table and slipping into the hall so gracefully that hardly any of the room’s occupants noticed. Viktor liked that about Chris. A flair for dramatics was only as useful as far as one's talent for subtlety went too. Chris understood this. Christophe Giacometti was like Viktor, only with some common sense and a penchant for both taking and giving orders.

He would make a good Bratva boss, if he were Russian.

Viktor did not realize Chris had returned until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Giacometti still had Viktor’s phone pressed to his ear, but his head was drawn next to Viktor’s conspiratorially.

“Nikiforov. It’s Leroy.”

Viktor dipped his head for some illusion of privacy. “What does he want?”

“He’s not exactly being very clear--JJ, if you want to communicate something with me, speak the fuck up.” Chris suddenly presented the phone to Viktor. “He wants you. Won't speak to me.”

Viktor stood, stepping away from the table with some urgency. Eyes were drawn from private conversations to watch him speak to a stranger in company. Viktor didn’t do things such as that, if he could help it. All business was conducted in private. It was easier to give the illusion of complete control when one didn’t give a public platform to negotiations with his opponents.

“It’s Nikiforov.”

“Viktor! Fuck. Katsuki's here.”

Something icy filled his veins. “That is not in the least bit humorous, Leroy.” His voice was probably too loud to exude control. Viktor turned his back on the table meaningfully, and whispers broke out behind him. “Consider your precarious standing in my house before you fuck around on assignments, perhaps.”

“I’m not--Nikiforov, I’m not _fucking_ around--Christ--”

Three knocks on the large oak doors that led into the sitting room. Nobody rose to open them. Everybody was looking at Viktor.

The knocking came again.

“For Christ’s sake,” Viktor snapped aloud. “Altin, get the fucking door.” There was no need. The door was open. In the frame stood a very pale Lee Seung-gil.

Jean-Jacques Leroy was still speaking uselessly into Viktor’s ear. Very stiffly, Viktor hung up.

“Viktor!” said the dead man companionably beside Lee. “You're looking unwell.”

Viktor was consciously aware of the fact that Giacometti had drawn imperceptibly closer to his person, and that Babicheva had risen violently from the table.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here?” she demanded. Viktor wanted to tell her to shut up, but he couldn't find the words. He couldn't find any words.

Except: “You’re dead.” Brilliant. Scintillating. He was going to fucking lose it in front of the entire Plisetsky house.

Katsuki Yuuri looked amused. “Not as far as I’m aware, actually. One of us must be mistaken.” His voice was different, his face was different, everything about him was different. Crueller, and not in a way Viktor could find beautiful. This Katsuki was sharp in a way that was utterly terrifying. “I know how it must disappoint you to find me alive. Please don't be too upset.”

Seung-gil said, “Sir, Leroy said--” Viktor silenced him with a gesture. He was trembling. He could not discern for what reason.

“Yuuri.” Evidently Chris and Mila had elected to speak in Viktor’s stead. He was again grateful. “What do you want? The papers said--”

“I am aware of what the papers said.” His tone was revealingly bitter about this. Viktor wondered vaguely if Mila had succeeded in slipping more alcohol into him than he’d noticed. He hoped to god he was simply drunk. This scenario seemed impossible.

 _Dead_.

Katsuki was still in the doorway. He adjusted his cuffs primly. “Is this how we greet guests now?” he lamented. “Interrogations? I wasn't even invited to dinner.”

Halfway down the table, porcelain shattered. The offending dish had been Yuri Plisetsky’s plate, dashed against the floor. The sixteen-year-old was standing, shaking, looking rather like an enraged kitten facing off a self-satisfied panther.

“You're not a fucking _guest_ ,” he snapped. Beside him, Otabek Altin stood. The movement looked perhaps like solidarity, but it was only a silent promise to Nikiforov that if Katsuki Yuuri decided he wanted Plisetsky dead, Altin would take the bullet in Yuri’s stead. “You’re not welcome in this house.”

Katsuki Yuuri appraised the younger Yuri with an amused expression. “You’ve grown,” he remarked easily. “But still just as level-headed, I see.”

“Yuri,” Viktor said, then realized the possibility of confusion at his use of simply given names. Katsuki met his gaze with an unfamiliar smirk. “Plisetsky. Sit the fuck down.”

Yuri Plisetsky’s gaze whipped to the opposite side of the table to glare at Viktor. He had that edge to his voice that Viktor recognized as terror, but his expression was enraged. “I will not.”

“You will,” Viktor said levelly, dangerously. Firmly, Altin shoved Yuri Plisetsky back into his seat.

“Cute,” Katsuki said, taking a step farther into the room. The metallic click of the safety on Mila’s glock echoed to the cavernous ceiling. Yuuri’s eyes flickered to her. “Mila. That’s unnecessary.”

“Like hell,” Mila snapped. “Don’t fucking move. I’ll kill you.”

“Will you?” His tone was again amused. “I doubt Viktor would be very pleased with you for that.”

Mila retorted with something very explicit which Viktor did not catch. He was focused entirely on Katsuki Yuuri. He was thinner now (Viktor’s fault, most definitely), but his shoulders were broader and his face had shed the last bit of roundness Viktor had known back when Yuuri was twenty-four. He looked entirely comfortable in a room full of hostile enemies. He looked like a stranger.

Yuuri’s mouth twisted, first irritably, then settling back into that well-molded smirk. “I had thought we were on better terms than that, Mila.”

“Katsuki,” Viktor said, and they were some of the first words he’d consciously chosen to speak. He sounded almost in control again. “What do you want?”

“ _Nikiforov_ ,” Yuuri mimicked his accent, exaggerating the harshness of consonants. He made as if to take another step forward and met Mila’s eyes over the table. Her expression was unshakable. Yuuri took the step.

Mila did nothing. Yuuri smiled, satisfied, as if he’d know she would not shoot him. Viktor wondered if they were all that predictable. “I want my job back.”

“No.” Babicheva. Yuuri’s eyes flashed, and he looked at her with barely concealed irritation.

“Do you speak for him now?” he snapped. He looked back to Viktor. “Have I been replaced?” He didn't specify in what way, but the implication was vile. Viktor did not dignify the question with a response.

Instead Viktor said, “How did you get out of Fuchū?” This unbalanced Katsuki, as Viktor had hoped. For another moment, he did not look so self-satisfied. Something like hatred took up residence in his expression.

“About the same way I got in, I expect,” he said icily. “Connections. Money is a wonderful motivator.”

“Then why do the papers say you're dead?”

Yuuri looked at him levelly. “Would you want the world to know you let a high-profile drug lord escape your top national prison, if you were in charge?” He lifted his chin, exposing a pale throat. Vulnerability had always been a device which Katsuki Yuuri manipulated well. But this gesture was not so much vulnerable as achingly calculated. _You can't kill me. I know you won’t. Coward_. “I can only assume a few national governments have been alerted. But the rest is all appearances, you know.”

Viktor knew. He had been very good at appearances, years ago. He had lost the knack for them in recent times. Such was the reason for what Mila dubbed _malcontents in the ranks._

“And why would I let you have your job back? You’d kill me, or kill him--” Indication with his head to seething Plisetsky. “The first opportunity you found.”

“Viktor.” Another step forward. Mila still did nothing. Viktor hated the way he said his name. “I don't think it's a question of _allowing_ me my job back, and more of letting me save you from inevitable obscurity. You understand?”

Silence. Viktor lifted his chin. He couldn't answer a question like that without admitting his obvious weakness. And he would not do that in front of his own men. Yuuri knew this, had calculated so. He continued speaking, and took another step until he was close enough to touch the edge of the table.

“You’re running yourself into the ground here. I’d almost be flattered by your total ineptitude without me, if it weren't so damned embarrassing.” His fingers ran along the edge of the table casually. Viktor felt his throat tighten, and Katsuki Yuuri’s eyes drifted up to fall on his face. He smiled. “I mean, for god’s sake, you can't even speak for yourself anymore.”

Suddenly Chris’ presence beside him was suffocating, humiliatingly incriminating. Viktor stepped away from him too quickly. Katsuki Yuuri laughed.

“I want my job back because I don't want my legacy to be three years of success before the devil of Saint Petersburg lost his grip and left my empire to the dogs.” He tapped something discordant on the tabletop. “If I had intentions to kill you--either of you--I would not be here. I would not have let Leroy disarm me in front of the gates, and I certainly wouldn't let Babicheva speak to me like that.”

“Get _fucked_.”

Katsuki Yuuri smiled. “Case in point. There are easier ways to kill you than marching outnumbered one to twenty back into your home.”

And this was true. Viktor knew it, and Katsuki knew it. Viktor would have liked to believe they were at a stalemate here, but the reality of the situation was that Katsuki Yuuri was winning this fight. Viktor Nikiforov was going to be dethroned in his own home.

_For god’s sake. Speak._

“How’s the arm?” Viktor drawled. Katsuki's eyes flashed.

“How’s the sex life?”

Jesus.

His throat tight, Viktor forced contempt into his voice. “How do you presume to retake control of an empire in which you’ve had no say for three years? While you were rotting in Tokyo, I replaced you.” Perhaps the emotional connotations of such a move would be lost on Katsuki Yuuri now. Viktor doubted he had a soul to match his corroded conscience anymore. But the insult to his expertise would rankle within him.

It did. Katsuki’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table, and his gaze roamed over the other occupants of the room. “Replaced me? With whom? Lee? Iglesia?” Both offending parties shook their heads. Seung-gil meet Yuuri’s eyes measuredly. Leo did not. “I hope for your sake, Nikiforov, that it wasn't anyone too close to your heart.”

“Threatening anyone under my jurisdiction is not a wise move,” Viktor snapped. “I had you removed the first time. I can make it permanent the second time.”

“Can you?” Katsuki looked at him under insultingly demure lashes. “How exciting. I doubt it.”

This was ridiculous. This was a private conversation, three years worth of intimacy and six years of guilt laid bare in front of thirteen of Viktor’s highest ranking and most trusted men and women. He would not continue this conversation over the length of a table. Not on Katsuki Yuuri’s terms.

He made it three steps before he felt a warning hand on his arm. Giacometti was speaking to him a low voice Viktor assumed was meant to be soothing. “Viktor, don't make a fool of yourself. You're letting him get to you, don’t--”

Rage surged within him. Viktor pulled his arm from Chris’ grip with enough force to make him rock back on his heels. “Don’t you _dare_ compromise my authority, ever,” he snapped. Loudly. “Touch me again and I’ll kill you personally.” It was a very Katsuki Yuuri thing to say. Katsuki himself seemed to have taken notice of this. He whistled lowly.

“You're learning,” he condescended, the smirk on his lips never reaching his eyes. “Perhaps you're not entirely a lost cause.”

Viktor was taller, bigger, older. These qualities had always affirmed within him that he was destined to be in charge, and Katsuki to be second-in-command. Now suddenly he did not feel so confident about the dynamics of their relationship, nor the difference of a few centimeters in height and two years in age. Still, he clung to these advantages. It was all he had.

Narrowing his eyes and casting a contemptuous look down at Katsuki Yuuri, Viktor stepped to meet him. “That’s incredibly bold. Who taught you all you know, Yuuri?”

Katsuki laughed. Perfectly irreverent. “Are you implying that _you_ did?” He narrowed his eyes too. “Cute. But the only things you taught me, Viktor, are those which can’t be repeated in polite company.” He caught Viktor’s hand at his side suddenly, and Viktor suffocated the instinct to flinch. But Katsuki Yuuri simply regarded his bruised knuckles with interest, and then pressed them chastely to his lips.

A sharp intake of breath reverberated in the room. Viktor experienced an infinite moment of paralysis. Then:

Nikiforov wrenched his hand from Yuuri’s and struck him sharply across the face. Yuuri’s head knocked sickeningly to the side. The cuts on Viktor’s knuckles reopened. The feeling was rather vindicating; the action had left a smear of his own blood on Katsuki’s cheek. “Don’t-- _fucking_ \--touch me.”

And Katsuki Yuuri laughed. Viktor realized that the sound was new, not his old laugh, which had possibly been the one self-conscious thing about him to survive. Now it was unamused, and chilling. He said nothing else to accompany it.

“Nikiforov,” Mila said from behind him, and her tone was pleading. Viktor remembered, finally, that they had an audience. His jaw tightened. He was idiotic. This was so obviously a performance, and Viktor had not prepared for it. Everything Katsuki had done up to this point was clearly calculated, and Viktor was acting completely on impulse. He’d drawn first blood, and it had been his own.

He was losing.

Calmly, Viktor drew himself up to his full height. Blood trickled down his fingers and coagulated between his knuckles. “Now. Don’t lie this time. What do you want from me?”

“From you? Nothing.” Katsuki gave him such a look of distaste that Viktor almost forgot he had kissed his hand seconds ago. His fingers twitched in death spasms. “I want my name and my power back and separated from your business, Nikiforov. I don't like living in shadows. Especially one fading as quickly as yours.”

Viktor skipped over the insult. He sneered. “I hope you intend to grovel for it.”

“For my own name?” Katsuki’s expression slid effortlessly from bemusement to exaggerated obsequiety. His old accent was thick on his tongue. “Vitya, _please_ , I’ll do _anything_ \--”

Viktor could not help it. He struck him again. Katsuki's lip split against his teeth. His smile was subsequently bloodstained.

“Just how many times are you planning to hit me?”

In that moment, Viktor would be content to continue hitting him until he fractured something painful and hopefully fatal in his face. Katsuki Yuuri was too pretty with an unbroken face, but even prettier with a bloody one. It enraged him.

He had lost it--both his grip on rationality and this fight. They were both bleeding, and Viktor had landed all the hits, but Katsuki Yuuri was the obvious champion. Viktor knew how such things worked, and he knew he could only concede graciously now.

“I’ll consider reinstating you.” Mila Babicheva spluttered indignantly behind him. Viktor’s eyes narrowed. “But on my own terms.”

Katsuki bowed obsequiously. “Of course.” He did not ask Viktor’s terms. His easy acceptance, as if he had expected this outcome from the beginning, made Viktor hate him. Hate himself.

 _Coward_. He should have killed him the first time he had the chance. He should have given all his money to that girl who couldn't speak Russian back in Tokyo six years ago. He should have eviscerated Katsuki Yuuri the first time he stole his phone. A clean execution then would have prevented so many recent problems.

Viktor Nikiforov sneered. Katsuki still had his head bowed. The deference was anything but sincere. “Aren't you going to thank me? For sparing your life? Giving you back your job? Continuing to send those envelopes of cash to your parents instead of killing them three years ago like I should have?”

A mistake. Viktor realized he had made it immediately, but he could hardly retract the statement. And perhaps he didn’t want to. But the way Katsuki’s head snapped up to stare at him with total loathing certainly made him regret it.

He registered the inevitability of the left hook but could do nothing to prevent it. The hit threw him backwards and sideways, and his ribs drove sharply into the table. The unidentified person Viktor had crashed into made a surprised little noise which Viktor found an incredible understatement.

 _Jesus_.

Many choice words in Japanese followed the punch. Dimly, Viktor was grateful at least to have dredged some sincere emotion out of Katsuki’s corpse. He realized belatedly that he had laughed, and that the unexpected sound had silenced Katsuki Yuuri. His chest rose and fell in rapid succession, but such was the only movement he made as Viktor pushed himself wearily onto his feet. He looked--stricken. He looked human. Finally.

Levelly, Viktor said, “Is that all?” His nose was dripping blood onto his lapels. Fucking hell. Babicheva had been right. Everything Viktor did was a goddamned fiasco.

Katsuki Yuuri closed his eyes and did not reopen them. Very quietly, he said, “I suppose it is.”

“Fantastic.” Viktor used the heel of his palm to swipe at the blood on his upper lip and regarded such visceral evidence of his humanity with distaste. He used the same hand to wave dismissively at Katsuki. “Someone handle this. Put him in a room. I don't care which one. Lock it.”

Lee Seung-gil volunteered. Viktor, preoccupied with a freshly bloodstained suit, did not watch them go.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Mila had lost all fucking tact. Viktor would not stand for her verbally berating him in full view of the rest of the room. He cut her a very murderous look which did nothing to deter her onslaught. “You’re going to get yourself killed! What _was_ that--”

“Mila.” Calmly. “Speak to me like that again and I’m cutting out your tongue. Do you understand?”

This gave her pause. Her eyes burned with anger, but she shut her mouth. Viktor was glad. He would not have enjoyed cutting out Mila’s tongue, but he was itching to hurt someone. He probably would have followed up on his promise.

“Yes, sir,” Mila said stiffly. “I apologize.”

His nose was still bleeding. It did not feel broken, but Viktor prodded the skin experimentally regardless. The prognosis revealed an unbroken nose and more blood on his cuffs. The revelation made him think. If Yuuri had wanted to break his nose, he would have. If Yuuri had wanted to kill him with one punch, he was certainly well-versed in fighting enough to do so. Perhaps...Viktor couldn't fathom what this perhaps meant.

“Giacometti, you stay. Plisetsky, you too. You’ll spend the night here. The rest of you--” Viktor paused to lean across the table and reclaim his martini from Chris’ setting. He drained the glass with no further concern for the burn of the liquor. Then he smashed the martini against the hardwood floors. Someone jumped, but no one spoke. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A change of pace in this one. I really enjoyed writing it, but editing was a trip (numerous week-long trips, actually), so I apologize if there are any fatal flaws to it.
> 
> Thank you again to everyone who has read the last two chapters, especially for all your kind interactions in the comments and kudos! The reception of my dumb attempt at an overkill au had been fantastic thus far...thank you again.
> 
> I have no other notes, except that I have now reached the point where I am seriously considering a rating change in the near future (if I can manage). I like to write and edit two chapters ahead of what I post in order to ensure it's all linear and working according to plot, and I'm straying into definitely less chaste territory in the coming chapters. I'll keep updates on this posted as the fic progresses. 
> 
> Thanks one last time, and please don't hesitate to drop a kudos or comment if you feel compelled to do so!
> 
> xx


	4. Venomous

Yuuri was going to die. There was no question or uncertainty to the subject. He had gone too far. Nikiforov was going to eviscerate him.

Lee had shown him to a guest room on the first floor in which Yuuri had never been. He had not sleep in guest rooms previously. Often he had shared Viktor’s own bed. The sensation of being in a place all at once familiar and entirely hostile was unpleasant.

The turn of the outside lock was what had set off the anxiety. Such a visit was conveniently timed. Now he would have the privilege of facing his execution with no semblance of poise at all, instead with sweating palms and erratic breathing and humiliatingly public terror. Retribution for his sins, surely. An embarrassment, nonetheless.

And there was nothing to be done about it. Yuuri had attempted to slow his breathing, lying faceup on the impeccably made bed and closing his eyes and counting to some unspecified number. There was no room in his crowded head for a goal to be set, and the attempt collapsed after he reached the number twenty. His fingers curled white around fistfuls of the duvet. His skin felt vacuum-packed to his bones. He was going to die.

Of course he had taken it too far. That was what Katsuki Yuuri did. He did too much, too rashly, and then he regretted it. Perhaps he could have gotten away with such irreverence as he had shown, perhaps even gotten away with kissing his hand. But he would not go unpunished for striking him. Not when they'd had such an esteemed audience.

Katsuki Yuuri was going to die. He tried to accept it. The parasitic thing in his head was making that impossible. The voices rising in volume outside the locked door made it doubly so.

In the event of his death, he had promised to take Chulanont down with him. Yuuri considered now the possibility of selling out a kid who couldn't have possibly been older than twenty-four, of handing him over to Nikiforov to torment for information many hours before he killed him. Viktor had done it to Yuuri.

But no. Yuuri was not Viktor, and he would not be that cruel. This was his mistake, and he alone would pay for it.

His family, too, would pay for it. But that again was Katsuki Yuuri’s business.

He worried his bottom lip with his teeth. The split Viktor had given him opened afresh, and blood welled on his tongue. Yuuri frowned.

He was incredibly stupid. No one touched Viktor Nikiforov and got away with it. Yuuri knew this better than anyone. He also knew that there was a fine line between calculated hatred and loss of control, and Katsuki Yuuri had crossed it. Viktor had crossed it too, much earlier than he, and while Yuuri had relished his complete loss of rationality in the moment, he feared it now.

He was afraid of Viktor Nikiforov. The thought, while not new, was freshly painful.

His eyes were still closed when the voices outside the door stopped. Conversation had raged in Russian, but Yuuri had been much too preoccupied to pay it mind. He wished now he had listened, so he knew in what context someone outside had apparently punched through the plaster of the wall. He did not want to face that anger.

The turn of the lock and swing of the door did not rouse him. Spoken words did.

“You’re not going to stand to greet me?”

Yuuri was too exhausted to invent a clever retort. Instead, he waved a dismissive hand and continued to lie on the bed, eyes closed.

“Will you at least address me?” Irritation. There was something else to his voice too. The slippery vowels Yuuri recognized from when Viktor drank. Fantastic. Yuuri did not sit up, but he opened his eyes. He decided he’d like to know what was coming for him ahead of time.

“That depends,” he drawled. “Will you continue to beg for it?”

The room was very still. Viktor Nikiforov stood at a distance from him, too far for Yuuri to see his expression from this angle. His shoulders were set, and it did not appear than he was a living thing. A statue, perhaps. A very dangerous one.

“How did you get out of Fuchū? You were in solitary.”

“Keeping tabs on me?” Yuuri had prepared lies for this, but he doubted their power to fool Nikiforov. Suddenly they seemed flimsy on his tongue. “I paid off my guards.”

“ _I_ paid off your guards. To ensure that didn't happen.”

“I appreciate your concern for my security,” Yuuri snapped. “But you weren’t the only force interested in my treatment at Fuchū, Nikiforov.”

“Minako.” It was not a question. Yuuri did not treat it as one.

“Minako had the potential to be a much better criminal than either you or me, Viktor. It’s regrettable that she gave up her future just to train little brats to make their own fortunes.”

Viktor said something very low beneath his breath. Yuuri quirked an eyebrow. “It’s true. You know it.”

Viktor said coolly, “I know that Okukawa Minako is a conniving bitch who spends all her time trafficking cocaine and converting minors into prostitutes, and if I ever met her again I’d kill her. I know nothing else.”

This irritated Yuuri to distraction. He sat up from the bed and made eye contact with Nikiforov. “Is that what I am?” he asked icily. “A prostitute?”

“A prostitute wholly out of your league,” Viktor confirmed in the same tone. “And I should have killed you earlier too.”

“Well, I won't deny that.” Yuuri rose gracefully from the bed. _Prostitute_. Viktor Nikiforov didn't appreciate what he’d had. Yuuri would make him regret it. “But if I’m a prostitute, what does that make you? Just a man who ruined his life over a whore.”

Blood pulsed in Nikiforov’s throat. Yuuri could see the movement beneath his ear, and this involuntary reaction was more telling than any of the hatred on his face. He was scared of Yuuri, perhaps just as much as Yuuri was terrified of him. The thought was nearly thrilling.

“What happened to you?” Viktor demanded quietly. “You're--you're not what you were.”

“Three years in Fuchū doesn't make you _nice_ , Vitya.” Yuuri’s fingers twitched. He wanted to hit him again. He wouldn't. “Especially not three years on death row.”

Viktor Nikiforov met his gaze evenly. “You can't possibly deny that you deserve death row, Katsuki.”

It was true, and it made Yuuri laugh. Of course, he knew he deserved to die, but three years ago he’d never imagined Viktor would voice the same opinion. Perhaps Viktor Nikiforov was not quite the same after these years either.

Yuuri hadn't believed it was possible to hate Viktor Nikiforov this much. Three years ago, he had almost loved him.

“Despite whatever you've fooled yourself into believing, you are just as mortal as I am, Viktor,” Yuuri spat. “It's a pity Russia won't kill you, because maybe three years on a waitlist for death by hanging would humble you a bit.”

Viktor hummed a bored note. “It seems to have done the opposite to you.”

His chest was tight. Yuuri forced himself to take a step back and measure his breathing. He couldn't isolate the hatred from the terror, and it was making him sloppy. “At least it didn't make me a coward,” he spat. “You should have killed me yourself, instead of selling me to Japan and letting them mete out my punishment. Were you afraid of my blood on your hands? After so many others, were you afraid of killing _me?_ ” He laughed again, and this time he surprised himself with the sound. “Adorable.”

Quietly, Viktor said, “I didn't know they'd execute you for it.”

“Six known counts of murder,” Yuuri snapped. “Only in theory did they care about whether they occurred in Japan or not. I was a public menace, and they wanted me gone.” He closed his eyes. “And you knew that would be the result. Don't lie to me.”

“But that’s all you've done to me since you showed up,” Nikiforov hissed, and Yuuri’s heart leapt into his throat. He knew. He knew, he knew, he _knew_.

Yuuri was definitely dying tonight.

“Tell me why you're here, Yuuri.” Viktor stepped toward him softly. “And I won't kill you right now.”

There was no way he could know the truth. Katsuki Yuuri swallowed thickly. He would not allow his voice to tremble. Viktor would not know how terrified he was of dying at his hands.

There was no way he could _know_.

_Get a grip_. He was letting his brain get the best of him. Yuuri knew how to conquer Viktor Nikiforov, and it was no longer with the cheap coquettish mess he had been in Kabukicho. It was not with this panic either, though this was more real; Viktor Nikiforov did not like transparency, and neither did Yuuri.

Katsuki Yuuri pulled himself the fuck together. He squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full height.

“I want what’s due to me, Viktor,” he said. “That’s all. I want my family provided for and I want the world to remember me for my efforts. I don't give a fuck about how you fit into the equation.”

He was wearing his gloves. Yuuri didn't know how he had missed this until now. He stared at his hands, and Viktor’s gaze drifted down to see what had shaken him so. His expression was confused.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Yuuri backpedaled as gracefully as possible and strode to the window. He stared out at the street rather than look Nikiforov in the eye. “Does that mean we have an arrangement, or are you still planning on killing me?”

“We haven't made any arrangements.”

Yuuri tipped his head to the side. “So you're going to kill me?” The words were too bold, an inaccurate reflection of the anxiety bubbling beneath his skin. But the Katsuki Yuuri of legend was electric, volatile, invincible. It would not do to show that Yuuri was moments from self-destructing.

It took Viktor Nikiforov a long time to respond. Maybe he was considering his options. Slowly, slowly, he said, “I'm not going to kill you.”

Yuuri closed his eyes. His fingers curled involuntarily around the windowsill. Death throes.

“Please don't lie to me, Viktor.”

Something like a laugh preceded the words. “Are you really so afraid of dying, Yuuri?”

“I’m afraid of everything.” Softly. He almost didn't realize he'd made the confession. Behind him, Viktor made a bemused sound.

“I’d forgotten. You're a coward too.”

Yuuri did not answer. The silence hung between them for a moment, two cowardly monsters who could not even face each other in a locked room. The thickness of the quiet was eating Yuuri alive.

“My terms,” Viktor said finally, and the words were like a gasp. “My terms are that you can live, and you can have your job back, as long as you leave Yuri alone. I don't want you alone in a room with him at any moment, and if I ever find out you have broken this rule, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

“I’m no danger to Plisetsky,” Yuuri breathed against the windowpane.

“I don't believe you, and I don't care. Don't go near him, don't speak to him, and don't touch him. Ever.”

Yuuri blinked. It was a small price to pay, after all. His grip on the sill loosened. “Understood.”

“I'm not reappointing you to your previous position. You want your authority back, then you’re welcome to grovel for it. But you will not replace Chris as my second again, and Mila will sooner gut you than step down to make room for you. Be content with being subordinate, or leave. Yes?”

There would be no groveling. His pride would not stand for it. Yuuri bit down hard on his tongue. “Yes.”

He heard it, felt it, when Nikiforov took a quiet step toward him. Yuuri’s breath hitched audibly in his throat, and he kicked himself for the betrayal. Viktor would never know how unbalanced he was. Yuuri would sooner kill him, throwing his government deal to the wind and facing the consequences, than allow that to happen. He smelled like alcohol and designer cologne. Nearly drunk and impeccably groomed, Viktor Nikiforov was probably highly-flammable at the moment.

It was a nice thought.

“And,” Viktor murmured. “You will not touch me ever again. This is non-negotiable. Understood?”

Yuuri laughed abruptly. The bloody discoloration on his lower lip reflected in the windowpane. “That won’t be a problem.” Nikiforov’s proximity made him nervous, and prompted a further defense. “Don’t flatter yourself, Viktor. You were pretty when I was twenty-one. I know now that you're too venomous to bother with.”

“Hm.” The distress in Yuuri’s ribcage lessened when Nikiforov took a relenting step back. Not surrender. Pity. He _knew_. “I like that. _Venomous_.”

“Like a very large toad,” Yuuri clarified, with vindication. At the disgruntled noise behind him: “You're too vain for your own good.”

“And you're a hypocrite,” Viktor snapped. Yuuri was pleased to know the old barbs still worked. Viktor was a preening creature. Insulting his appearance was juvenile, but nonetheless an effective blow. Yuuri shrugged at his reflection.

“I did learn from the best,” he said.

Viktor Nikiforov looked at him for a long time. Yuuri did not return the stare. Faking interest, he inspected the lines of fading colored ink on the backs of his hands. He heard rather than saw Viktor turn on his heel.

“You can sleep here,” he said coolly. “You won't leave my home at night, and you won't go anywhere without my permission. That's my final term.”

Anger flared in him, but Yuuri maintained his bemused expression. “If Japan’s top level security prison couldn't keep keep me in, Viktor,” he drawled, “what makes you think some flimsy house arrest will?”

“I imagine your home address in Japan and my knowledge of your family’s whereabouts at all times might convince you.”

Katsuki Yuuri was getting tired of people threatening his family. He punctuated this with a well-placed fist through the drywall next to the window. Viktor simply regarded the scene with amusement.

“Look at that. Now we match.” He flexed his gloved fingers as if shaking out the numbness after a punch. So he had been the one to strike the wall outside the door. Yuuri had expected as much. He couldn't imagine Christophe Giacometti daring to bruise his knuckles.

Nikiforov appraised Yuuri’s newly bleeding hand. “I’ll get someone to check that,” he said dismissively.

“Fuck you,” Yuuri spat. He was trembling. He was very, very exhausted. “I can handle it myself. Get out.”

Raised eyebrows. “Can you?” Viktor said. “I doubt it.” They were Katsuki’s own words, his own smugness, thrown back in his face. Yuuri stifled the urge to put his other fist through the wall. “I’ll send Chris in when you're behaving civilly. Don't kill him, please. I’ll be mildly upset if you do.”

“Get _out_ ,” Yuuri snapped, furious. “Get the _fuck_ out.”

Viktor lifted his chin and gave Yuuri the most contemptuous look he had ever seen. At least it was clear Viktor stood on the same emotional ground as Yuuri now. There was much love lost between them, but none of it would be missed.

“Good night, Yuuri.”

And then he left, and Katsuki Yuuri was alone. Terrifyingly so.

* * *

In the morning, Yuuri woke to a pile of his most expensive clothing deposited directly outside the guest bedroom door. Anything and everything that had shared space in Nikiforov’s closet had been torn from its hanger and tossed vindictively on the floor to wrinkle. Viktor was twenty-nine, but his capacity for petulance far surpassed any child Yuuri had met.

Katsuki Yuuri was too tired for anger, and so it was with resignation that he gathered up his belongings and placed them on the unmade bed. Then he went to breakfast.

The kitchen staff were the only people to immediately treat him with deference again. The head cook greeted him amiably, like Yuuri had lived for the last three years in this house and was still on polite terms with her employer. Yuuri leaned against the inside of the door and listened to her chat irreverently with the rest of the kitchen.

“And what would you like, sir?” she addressed him once, loudly, from across the room. “Or are you just going to watch?”

“I’m on house arrest,” Yuuri replied easily. “I don't suppose there’s much else for me to do besides watch.”

“Maybe if you hadn't hit him, you wouldn't be on house arrest,” she clucked, and Yuuri didn't mind the friendly chastisement. She was harmless--one of the very few harmless inhabitants of the house, in truth--and the kindness was welcome after the events of the previous night. “Go, go, sit. I’m making you breakfast.”

Yuuri thanked her, amused but sincerely grateful too, and retreated to the smaller dining room. It was separate from the room in which Viktor had hosted last night’s party. He sat at the head of the table, lest Viktor arrive for breakfast and entertain the misconception that Yuuri was ever intending to grovel. Yuuri had been a prince in this household once, and he would be again. There would be no bowing to higher powers involved.

After Viktor had left, Yuuri had waited to text Phichit news of his survival. He was unsure still whether he was being watched, and any suspicious activity was still grounds for potential execution. Phichit had responded immediately with several emojis whose compounded meaning Yuuri couldn't discern, and he’d deleted the conversation from his messages. The mere thought of Phichit Chulanont had become exhausting.

Giacometti had arrived soon after that. Presumably judging Yuuri civil enough to approach now, he had knocked on the door once before opening it. He had not waited for permission to enter.

“I told him I didn't want your damned help,” Yuuri had said. He was sitting in a chair by the darkened window, the reading lamp on and an untouched book sitting in his lap to distract from the clawed state of his hand. He hadn't broken it, but it did hurt like hell. His knuckles had swollen to the point where even minuscule movement had become unthinkable. It was, in short, a mess.

“For some reason, I can't bring myself to care what you want,” Giacometti had said wryly. Yuuri had sneered.

“Fuck off. I’ll fix it myself.”

“No, you won't. Let me see.”

And there had been little he could do, and the longer he waited the more unbearable the pain was becoming anyway, and so Yuuri had shown Chris his hand.

“Maybe if you two didn't punch things every time you decided to showcase your emotional stuntedness, I wouldn’t have to be here in the first place,” Chris had remarked. Yuuri had ignored him. “At least Viktor had the sense to be wearing gloves.”

Yuuri hadn't spoken the entire time Chris wrapped his hand, though there had been plenty goading attempts at conversation. He’d looked in the opposite direction of Giacometti’s face the entire time.

“So are you going to ignore me for the rest of your life?” Chris had asked, finally. He was very carefully studying Yuuri’s facial profile, as if he could glean all his secrets from the silhouette made by his cheekbones, and his proximity irritated Yuuri. He made a conclusatory noise in his throat. Chris had shrugged.

“That's fine. We don't have to be friends.” He’d stood, gathered his things. “I’d like to respect you, maybe, but your tantrums do make it difficult.”

Yuuri had met his eyes with a sharp twist of his head, and Chris had looked contemptuous. How _dare_ he presume himself better than Yuuri because he’d become Viktor’s new lapdog. Yuuri had vocalized something to this extent, and Chris had narrowed his eyes.

“Nikiforov is my friend. Perhaps you were never acquainted with such concepts, Yuuri, but you protect your friends.” Yuuri had bitten down hard on his tongue, and blood filled his mouth. Chris’ expression was one of utter loathing. “I don't trust you, and frankly Viktor is an idiot when the subject is Katsuki Yuuri, and so I intend to protect him from you.”

“ _Lapdog_ ,” Yuuri had spat.

Chris had appraised Yuuri with distaste. “Better a lapdog than a euthanized attack dog, anyway.”

Yuuri stood suddenly. “You want to protect _him_ from _me_?” he’d hissed. Chris had been unimpressed with this show of bravado too. Perhaps this was due to the fact that he had spent the last twenty minutes tweezing chunks of plaster out of Yuuri’s left hand, or the fact that he had a good ten centimeters on him in height, or the fact that they both knew that if anything at all happened to Christophe Giacometti, Katsuki Yuuri would pay the price doubly so. Chris had smiled, not kindly.

“I can't see the appeal of ruining his life over you again. He seems determined to do so, but you're...not much.” His eyes swept down and up Yuuri’s person insultingly. A muscle twitched in his jaw, but his expression was coldly amused.

Yuuri had wished him something explicit and anatomically impossible in Japanese. Chris replied in kind, in French. Both met each other’s eyes and did not move.

Measuredly, Chris said, “I respect Viktor’s decisions. Regardless, I hope this turn of events ends with your body in a shallow grave somewhere.”

“Been there,” Yuuri replied tightly. “Done that.”

“Perhaps you're better suited to floating face down in a canal south of Nevsky then. Can you swim?”

“There are lots of ways you can end up dead that won't be tracked to me, Giacometti,” Yuuri had snapped. “Viktor would never even know.”

Giacometti had laughed, and turned sharply on his heel. “Likewise for you, Katsuki. Make no mistake about your friends here--you have none. So you better hope Nikiforov watches your back for you.”

And then he, too, had left, and Yuuri had picked at his bandaged hand in sullen hatred for the next hour, until he’d fallen asleep in the unfamiliar bed. He had not slept well.

He was not characteristically a coffee drinker, and the cooking staff had admirably remembered this. However, Yuuri politely declined the teacup that was set before him now.

“Something with caffeine, please,” he requested. “No tea.”

The boy was perhaps fourteen. Yuuri wondered where Viktor got these damn kids. Interned children of criminal aristocracy looking for their comeup, perhaps. He nodded eagerly. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

While he scurried away, Katsuki Yuuri flicked through countless news articles featuring his face. The GPS on his phone had updated his whereabouts, and it buzzed incessantly with pre-programmed tourism tips for those new to Saint Petersburg. Yuuri would have to disable that feature soon, lest his irritation prompt him to drop the buzzing thing out of a high-story window. The Japanese government would not be pleased with him for that. And there would go his only lifeline outside of the Nikiforov house too. It was best he keep the phone.

Some high-aspiring journalist had written a promising-looking editorial on what she called the Nikiforov-Katsuki crime era. Yuuri bookmarked it for later.

The boy brought him back some horrible espresso, which was horrible not for its quality but for the simple fact that Yuuri abhorred coffee, and then hurried back a moment later bearing his plated breakfast. Yuuri thanked him, and the kid blushed.

“No problem, sir. You’re welcome, sir.” He spoke his Russian with a painstakingly smothered Japanese accent which Yuuri found charmingly familiar. Apparently he had missed the dismissal in Yuuri’s tone, because he lingered. Yuuri raised an eyebrow.

“What is it?” he asked. He remembered belatedly that he was speaking to a child, and dropped his voice gentler on the final syllable.

“Um, I was just wondering, sir, um--” He broke off uncertainly, casting a glance at Yuuri’s plate. “Um, sir--I was just wondering if this meant that--” He looked to his shoes now. “That you were staying? Here?”

Yuuri sipped his coffee. “I believe it does,” he murmured. He smiled confidingly. “As long as no one kills me first.”

He had intended to make the kid smile, but the boy’s eyes dropped to his shoes again. “Um--I--” A nervous glance back to the kitchen. “I don't think--sir, please don't eat the food they made you.”

The placating smile dropped from Yuuri’s mouth. Of course. Damn Nikiforov, and damn his entire cult too. Yuuri’s hands went still.

“What did they put in it?” he asked calmly. “Who made it?”

“I don't know, sir. I just--I heard them talking and--please don’t. Please.”

“I won’t.” To demonstrate this, Yuuri pushed the plate farther up the table. “But I want to know who made it.”

“I don’t _know_ , sir.” The boy had slipped into Japanese in his distress. The tips of his ears flamed red, but he did not switch back to Russian. For urgency’s sake, presumably. “A woman, she--she said--I don't _know_ , sir. Rats get their due, she said.”

Yuuri’s jaw tensed. “Cute.” He tapped a gentle rhythm on the table with the tip of his knife, then drove the blade viciously into the oak. The boy jumped. “What about the coffee?” he asked calmly.

“I made the coffee, Mister Katsuki,” the boy confessed nervously. “It’s safe.”

Yuuri lifted the cup to him. The boy took it with trembling hands and confusion broadcast on his face. “I don't understand, sir.”

Katsuki Yuuri dipped his head graciously. “Prove it's safe, then. Drink--” He considered. “Oh, about half.”

The cup shook so violently in his hands that Yuuri was concerned the boy would spill it all. It had occurred to Yuuri already that, if the coffee were poisoned, dumping it all over the floor was an easy way to avoid a taste test. Gently, Yuuri steadied the bottom of the cup with a fingertip. “Now.”

The boy met Yuuri’s eyes over the rim of the cup, and he held his gaze as he drank half the coffee. When he was done, he set it down carefully on the saucer. His expression had become a mirror of Yuuri’s own: a challenge.

“It’s safe, sir.” Yuuri found that he liked this boy. Perhaps he reminded him of his younger self.

Yuuri smiled genuinely. “What's your name?” he inquired.

The boy swallowed. “Minami, sir.”

Yuuri tapped the coffee cup with a finger, thoughtful. “One of Minako’s?”

“No, sir. Minako hasn't trained anyone since your generation.” Yuuri knew this. He had asked anyway. A test.

“Well, thank you for your assistance, Minami. I appreciate it.”

“Yes, sir. No problem, sir.”

“I’ll keep this a secret between us, yes? To protect you back in the kitchen. And for you to protect me, too, in the future. Is that agreeable?”

Minami looked at him shrewdly. Yuuri raised an eyebrow.

“I suppose so,” the boy said slowly. “I don't want to get in trouble--”

“I’ll make sure no one will touch you,” Yuuri promised. “Don’t worry.” He smiled. “We can help each other.”

Minami bobbed his head nervously. “Thank you.” He made as if to collect Yuuri’s worthless plate, but Yuuri waved him off.

“Don’t bother. I’ll take care of it.” He looked knowingly at the boy. “Wouldn't want to incriminate you.”

“Thank you,” the boy said again. He recognized this second dismissal, and slipped quietly from the room.

Yuuri waited a good twenty minutes before carrying the cold, untouched plate back into the kitchen. He made sure he had everyone's full attention before he dropped the plate into the trash, handmade expensive china and all. The dish shattered at the bottom of the bin, and several people flinched.

The room was unnervingly silent. Yuuri appreciated that they were so willing to give him a moment to speak.

“I’d like to thank whoever made me breakfast. The warm welcome back was greatly appreciated.”

He was meet with more silence. Several men and women stared at him stonily. Yuuri caught movement in his peripheral vision, and turned his attention to it just in time to see a girl kick a round container subtly beneath a cabinet. He raised his eyebrows. She looked back defiantly.

“Fucking pig,” she spat in the quiet, and _then_ there was noise. Several of her companions took panicked steps away from the girl, and others had begun to murmur frantically to their peers. Yuuri walked calmly to the cabinet, the strike of his soles on the kitchen tile the loudest sound in the room, and knelt to retrieve the container.

Rat poisoning. What poetic justice that would have been, had she succeeded in killing Katsuki Yuuri with his breakfast. The curtailing of an infestation taken up residence in the Plisetsky house.

Yuuri said nothing when he pressed the metal container into her hands. He said nothing when she spat on his shoes. He just watched her.

She was not stupid. It was likely that she was crime nobility too, that she had been versed in intimidation since she was an even younger child, that she knew what was to come now that her attempted treason had been caught.

Quickly, almost quickly enough that Yuuri could not stop her, she pried off the top of the poison container and shoved her hand into the pellets. Katsuki Yuuri caught her wrist and pinned it to the counter behind her before she had a chance to shove them in her mouth.

“No.” Her chest rose and fell erratically. Her eyes were panicked. “It's not that easy.”

She spat on him again.

“What’s your family name?” Yuuri demanded. “Who are your parents?”

“ _Fucking--_ ”

“Answer me. How old are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?” Yuuri tilted his head appraisingly. “I don't kill children. What is your family name?”

The girl’s eyes burned with hatred. Katsuki Yuuri knew his were perfectly cold. “Likhoyedev.”

“Likhoyedev.” Yuuri smiled. Styopa Likhoyedev, he’d discovered the previous night, was his replacement. A fellow drug king, though less prolific, his circle was limited to the bounds of Petersburg. Yuuri had been insulted to hear he had been so carelessly replaced with one so uninteresting. “I know your father.”

He released her wrist suddenly, and she sagged against the counter. “Please, sir…”

“For future reference, Miss Likhoyedev, if you're going to poison someone,” said Yuuri, stepping backwards to square his shoulders. “Make sure you get the damn job done.”

Sound erupted in the kitchen. Yuuri let the door shiver with the force with which he had slammed it.

“Fucking hell, what were you doing it there? Leave the door on its hinges at least.”

Yuuri closed his eyes, gathering patience. His did not have the mental restraint to deal with Yuri Plisetsky now. He was ready to strangle something, and he would not allow that thing to be a sixteen-year-old heir to a Russian mobster’s fortune.

Neither, from the looks of him, would Plisetsky’s bodyguard allow such things. Katsuki Yuuri ignored Yuri Plisetsky and met the other’s gaze.

“Where’s Nikiforov?” he demanded.

“I don't know, sir.”

“Probably hungover,” Plisetsky said derisively. “It's a growing habit of his.”

Again, Yuuri ignored him. “Who are you?”

Plisetsky’s bodyguard looked at him with an indecipherable expression. The lines of his face were taut. “Otabek Altin, sir.”

“How old are you?”

Eyes narrowed. “Nineteen, sir.”

_Nineteen_. Yuuri tilted his head back until his crown brushed the door and laughed humorlessly. “Does he hire any adults anymore? Is this business run by anyone with a driver’s license?”

No reply. It was a response enough. Yuuri was tired. He rolled his eyes and stalked away.

“Katsuki.” Yuuri paused. Lingered in the doorway, but did not turn to look at him. He did not speak. “You don't live here anymore. Don't act like you do.”

_Please_. Yuuri’s eyes rolled again to the ceiling. He still said nothing.

“And keep away from Viktor.”

“Are you going to stop me?” The goad was out in front of him before Yuuri had even considered the consequences. He was not even allowed to speak to Yuri Plisetsky now, let alone challenge him. He would regret this.

“I’ll hit you with that electric piece of shit of yours rusting in the garage before I let you ruin him again,” Yuri snapped. “Don't touch him.”

Yuuri wondered when everyone had fallen under the impression that Katsuki was the one to ruin Nikiforov. Yuuri was the one who had been arrested, after all. He snapped, “Fortunate then that I have no intentions of doing that ever again.” And then: “Don’t talk about my car like that.”

“Fuck off.” Plisetsky made an obscene gesture. Yuuri scowled, unimpressed.

One day soon, he was going to kill him. Either of them. Yuuri could not decide whose death would be more satisfying. He would have to think on it, because any assassination attempt he made was likely to be the last thing he’d ever do.

He’d have to make it worth his while, after all.

* * *

 

**The Rise and Fall of the Katsuki-Nikiforov Era**   
_by Agrafena Svetlov_

_Pictured: Japanese news announcement of Yuuri Katsuki’s death_

How does the most powerful crime syndicate in Eurasia since the Soviet era die?

The short answer is with Yuuri Katsuki’s impromptu execution, which occurred this week, when he was shot during an escape attempt from Fuchū prison facilities in Tokyo, Japan.

The long answer also begins with Yuuri Katsuki, but in a different way. Six year ago, when he rose to power in Nikiforov’s court with a tight grip on western Russia’s illicit cocaine empire, his personal success was credited by many to Nikiforov’s infamous playboy reputation and little else. This is a mistake. He may be dead now, but to misjudge Yuuri Katsuki’s proficiency at what he did is still a grave misstep. Such misconceptions may be at the heart of the reason no one can seem to decide whether Nikiforov’s empire has fallen for good or not.

Katsuki had held little esteem in Japan before meeting Nikiforov. He had been twenty-one at the time of their first encounter; Nikiforov had been twenty-three. Katsuki was working in a sex club in Tokyo’s red light district, under the instruction of one of the Japanese underground’s most infamous criminal teachers. Nikiforov had won leadership in the immensely powerful Plisetsky family two years previously, after the assassination of its former patriarch, Nikolai Plisetsky. It was perhaps an unlikely and unorthodox place in which to meet one’s future second in command, but Viktor Nikiforov had spent the past two years demonstrating his unorthodox tendencies--in every sense of the phrase.

_Pictured left: Yuuri Katsuki’s American student ID. He was twenty years old at the time of the photo, and was already quite reputable at the University of Michigan for dealing drugs. Right: Viktor Nikiforov at seventeen, with adoptive father Nikolai Plisetsky._

Perhaps Yuuri Katsuki was damned from the start, for he quickly proved himself expert at Nikiforov’s trade. Within the year, he had become the Plisetsky’s yakuza connection, and Nikiforov’s right hand man and lover. A stunning rags to riches story for a man who had spent his formative years pushing blow at an American midwestern university and pole-dancing in an illegal nightclub in Kabukicho. By the next year, he had cultivated the Plisetsky family into underground Russia’s standing authority on all things cocaine, including the buying, selling, and copious consumption of the substance.

There are few anonymous photos surviving which document this modern golden era of Petersburg crime. Sensational coverage of the Plisetskys has since migrated to the likes of Yuri Plisetsky--the young heir of Nikiforov’s fortune who has recently developed a passion for terrorizing the Petersburg streets in a number of luxury sports cars--but five years prior, Katsuki and Nikiforov were Petersburg media’s darlings. They were criminals, yes, but they were also young and handsome and always doing fantastically frivolous things like smashing every bottle of thousand-euro champagne at Saint Petersburg’s most elite nightclub and supplying free pure cocaine to the club’s entire guest list. (As one does, when one is young and privy to eastern Europe’s entire surplus of drugs, obviously.) Katsuki-Nikiforov was an inseparable duo, untouchable by authorities by way of their obscene wealth and public adoration, and they were not going anywhere.

_Pictured: Katsuki and Nikiforov at a Bratva-owned nightclub. They are estimated twenty-two and twenty-four in the photo. Nikiforov’s current second in command, Swiss-born Christophe Giacometti, is also pictured._

The public is not privy to the turn of events that led to Katsuki’s falling out with Viktor Nikiforov. To assume it was a lover’s quarrel, as many of the tabloids have since done, showcases a fundamental misunderstanding of the way Katsuki and Nikiforov did business. While Russia was charmed by their seeming inability to look uncharismatic while wreaking havoc on the Petersburg crime scene, Katsuki and Nikiforov were cultivating quite the private reputation too. Much more sinister than anonymous photos of lap dances in nightclubs and coke nosebleeds dripping onto Armani lapels were Katsuki’s private endeavors. In December of 2013, Yuuri Katsuki personally executed four of Nikiforov’s paid-off crooked Kremlin politicians by throwing their bodies off a balcony at the Mikhailovsky Theater.

_Pictured left to right: Katerina Khokhlakov, Kremlin advisor on drug affairs; Mikhail Rakitin, treasury official; Pyotr Miusov, criminal affairs secretary; Katya Verkhovtsev, intelligence official. All had been on Nikiforov’s payroll at the time of their joint assassinations by Yuuri Katsuki._

The executions were public ones. Natural daylight was the best atmosphere for a coronation, after all, and it was very obvious that Katsuki had not intended to ever be a right hand man. He was a king, and Viktor Nikiforov would either make room for him or step down. Immediately.

Neither of these options occurred. What did occur was the kidnapping of thirteen-year-old Yuri Plisetsky the following year, and Yuuri Katsuki’s public dethroning. There is speculation about Nikiforov’s role in Katsuki’s arrest in Barcelona that year, and the strongest available evidence does seem to suggest that Nikiforov orchestrated Katsuki’s capture, to some extent. The two had been untouchable for years, even as very public figures operating in infamously prolific crime circles. History doesn't suggest Katsuki’s downfall would come in Spain, of all places, conveniently timed with Plisetsky’s safe return to his family. Nikiforov had clearly been involved.

_Pictured: Yuri Plisetsky, sixteen at time of photo. He has been attracting popular favor with young Russians for his illegal street racing habits._

What was less clear than his hand in the matter was Nikiforov’s motive. Anger at having been surpassed by his protégé? An ultimatum proposed by the Russian government, finally finding itself in possession of a spine after discovering a generous portion of its dead politicians had been in Nikiforov’s pocket? Had it been concern for Yuri Plisetsky’s future, with a rival as proficient at his trade as Katsuki dominating the stage? Or concern that his relationship with Katsuki had surpassed its usefulness in making the papers, and was now simply hindering business opportunities with Russia’s older, more traditional mafia tycoons? (It is not a good show of nationalism to promote a foreign man to your right hand, nor to publicize a sexual relationship with him when one’s target business partners are sixty-year-old Russian men, after all.) Perhaps, Nikiforov’s reasoning was all of the above.

Public records of the events in Barcelona--the true events, and not the tabloid drivel--are scarce. What remains of the redacted mess that are Katsuki’s medical records reveal he was treated for a close-range gunshot wound at Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, and that he spent at least one night in intensive care. His earliest arrest head shots certainly seem to back this up--gone is the self-confident crime lord of popular interest, and what remains is a man who looks very much like he was just shot by a close companion.

_Pictured: La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s famous unfinished cathedral where Yuuri Katsuki was arrested, critically injured, three years prior._

Fuchū records are even tighter. The little we know about Katsuki’s time in Fuchū is that he was present at the murder of a prison guard during his first year--though it is not clear whether he was involved--and thus spent the rest of his time in solitary confinement. He was on death row for six counts of murder. His escape attempt was the culminated end of what authorities have said were three years of careful cooperation with prison staff and respectful deference to other inmates. Anyone with any knowledge of Yuuri Katsuki would find this report hard to believe. But he had been biding his time.

Meanwhile, Nikiforov was murdering his own business. Turning in Katsuki, whatever his motive, had been an act of self-immolation. This was because, while the world had been treating Katsuki like a monster’s very pretty trophy husband, Yuuri Katsuki had been the monster at the forefront of the Plisetsky business’s success. Nikiforov was once again in charge of his own house, and without Katsuki’s connections, there was nowhere to funnel all the cocaine off of which they'd made their fortunes. No one did business like Katsuki, and no one wanted to do it with Nikiforov after his public mariticide.

But the Plisetsky family hardly fell off the map after Katsuki’s arrest. Nikiforov is still very much feared in Saint Petersburg. He’s still rich enough and untouchable enough that he could walk into any government building in the country and demand negotiations unscathed. He’s still the Devil of Saint Petersburg without Katsuki--but even this reputation is largely due to what Katsuki has done for his business.

_Pictured: Nikiforov with other Russian members of Plisetsky branch at the Mikhailovsky in 2014. From left to right: Mila Babicheva, Viktor Nikiforov, and Georgi Popovich. Others, including young Plisetsky and teacher Yakov Feltsman, are not pictured._

The question now is, if Yuuri Katsuki is dead, what is next for the Plisetskys? With Nikiforov slowly but surely losing his grip on the Petersburg crime scene (and with the Crispino siblings, an Italian-born criminal family, becoming a serious contender for his European empire), what type of city will Saint Petersburg become in the next few years? The house up on the hill in Nevsky Prospekt yet remains a symbol of Petersburg’s underground empire, and the family within it remains one of the most terrifying presences of 21st Century Russia. But with a dead second-in-command, an uninspired leader, and a seemingly uninterested heir, how long can Viktor Nikiforov’s legacy hold Saint Petersburg still? Times are changing. Perhaps, the Katsuki-Nikiforov era, and with it the golden age of Russian crime, is incapable of being resuscitated. Perhaps there’s nothing left for Nikiforov to do but retire while he’s ahead.

After all, he’s untouchable now. A tidy life living off of a young drug fortune is not so bad, when compared to Yuuri Katsuki’s end. It’s certainly a better alternative to the death throes of the Plisetsky family that have been so publicized of late. When faced with self-immolation and obscurity, perhaps safety outweighs legacy. It's become painfully apparent that, without Yuuri Katsuki, Viktor Nikiforov is little but a glorified crime baron, and that his rule over Petersburg will not continue without serious intervention. Everyone knows that a crime lord’s life without cocaine, sex, and hedonism of all kinds is hardly a crime lord’s life at all. Perhaps in his private adult years, Viktor Nikiforov has lost his public favor. Perhaps he's lost his touch altogether. To quit while he’s ahead seems the only viable action.

The only problem is: who is brave enough to tell him that?

* * *

 

Viktor was angry. There were many reasons for this, not the least of which was the insistent pulse in his temples, but the Russian media shared a contending spot with Katsuki Yuuri as the leading offender.

_Self-immolation._ How _dare_ they?

He couldn't exactly kill every journalist that wrote about him. Such things were considered immoral, even by mafia standards. Public attention was what kept men like Nikiforov afloat and out of a freezing cell in Krasnoyarsk, and a sudden killing spree of journalists who dared to pen his name would not be well-received. The irony of being a criminal was that he still needed to maintain public favor to survive.

Additionally, Viktor had never been a big fan of the cold. He would not last long in a maximum security Siberian prison, surrounded by Bratva veterans much larger than he--many of whose careers Viktor himself had destroyed. He would be hacked to death within weeks, and while this did not seem like the worst possible way to die, it was definitely not the most pleasant. Viktor was not Katsuki, and this was not Japan. He could not go to prison.

So he would not kill Agrafena Svetlov. But he would not allow this type of slander to survive. _Self-immolation._ Damn them all. He was a fucking king, and nothing in that title was due to Katsuki Yuuri. He had been a king before Yuuri, and fuck if he wasn't going to remain one after him. He had _made_ Katsuki what he was, and he was going to receive his credit where credit was due.

Someone was knocking on his door. It took Viktor several moments to differentiate between the knocking and the pulse in his head. Mila was going to hear from him for this.

“What?” he snapped. He disentangled himself from his sheets, kicking Makkachin gently in the process, and stood. The dog whined as he did so, and Viktor made an apologetic noise. Then he caught his reflection in the mirror across the room.

_Fucking_ fantastic.

Where Katsuki had hit him, a large bruise had taken up residence overnight. Blood pooled purple beneath his eye, and the yellow bruising continued from the ridge of a cheekbone to the opposite side of his nose. He looked, very explicitly, like he had just lost a very rough fight.

“Nikiforov. I’d like to speak to you.”

Viktor closed his eyes. “Not really in the mood at the moment.”

“Does it sound like I care?”

No, it didn't. Viktor abhorred taking orders. But answering the door was probably the best possible way to get this shit over with and get rid of Katsuki Yuuri. He dressed in something he snatched carelessly from the closet which did not match. As languidly as possible, in an attempt to distract from the mess of his face with sheer indifference, he opened the door.

Everything about the Katsuki Yuuri that stood before him was a surprise. Viktor couldn't fathom why, but something about the sheer...lack of togetherness about him was unnerving.

It was not that he looked bad, either, though privately Viktor would much have preferred if he had matched Nikiforov in looking like hell. He was dressed in one of the sweaters Viktor had just torn from his closet the night previously, and his hair was damp and unstyled. No contacts. (Of course, he had none anymore.) He was wearing his old blue-framed glasses in their stead. He did not look like Katsuki Yuuri--at least, not the Katsuki Yuuri that Viktor had known. He looked human.

The thought made Viktor profoundly uncomfortable. He handled this discomfort by reacting with malice.

“What the fuck do you want?” he snapped. Katsuki’s eyebrows shot up in faux surprise.

“A civil conversation for once, perhaps?” he asked innocently. Viktor scowled. “Breakfast?”

“The kitchen is open.” Viktor waved a dismissive hand. He began to close the door. “Help yourself.”

The door would not budge. Viktor meet Katsuki’s gaze simply, without looking down. He knew Yuuri had his foot wedged in the door, and he knew the satisfaction it would give him for Viktor to look. So he did not.

“The kitchen is unsatisfactory. I’m asking permission to leave.”

“The kitchen is _not_ \--”

“I haven't had a decent meal since I got out of prison, so I’d _strongly_ advise you didn't get in my way of this, Viktor.”

God _damn_. Viktor’s head pounded. “Is food all you fucking think about?” he snapped. Yuuri smiled. The image was incredibly disarming. His split lip had closed itself tentatively, and he looked rather young with it. Younger than he had been when he was twenty-one, and a good deal more innocent too.

“Oh, not quite all,” Yuuri said charmingly. “Right now I’m also thinking about how much everyone in this house wants me dead, and how if I don't get out I’m going to have further words with the girl who put rat poisoning in my breakfast this morning.” He tilted his head appraisingly. “I’m also thinking about how humbled you look with a fucked-up face. It sort of...begs pity. It’s a good look for you.”

Nikiforov sneered. “Fuck off.” Then he registered the words. “Rat poisoning?”

Katsuki nodded solemnly. “Don't worry. I'm handling it.” This did nothing to alleviate Viktor’s concern. In fact, it elevated it.

“You will _not_. I’ll handle it.”

Katsuki raised his eyebrows again, and pushed his lower lip out slightly with his tongue. Nikiforov felt like putting his own head through the door. “Understood.” He looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes. His voice was incongruently casual. “Can I go, then? You’re welcome to send someone to watch me, as long as it's not Giacometti.”

“What's wrong with Giacometti?” Viktor snarled. Katsuki inspected his nails.

“I hate him,” he shrugged, “and he’s much too in love with you to be a good conversationalist.”

“He’s not--”

Yuuri tilted his chin down and looked at Viktor indecipherably. “Viktor. Can I go, or not?” The edges of his face softened, his lips parted, his eyelids lowered. This was the famed Katsuki vulnerability that had so destroyed Viktor years before.

_Fuck_. He would not do this, he _could_ not do this. Viktor had not spent three years of his life torturing himself over Yuri Plisetsky’s wellbeing to dismantle it all again for Katsuki Yuuri. He would not.

Viktor clenched his jaw and closed his eyes and focused on the pounding in his head instead of the creature before him. He was going to ruin himself again if he was not careful.

_You tried to kill him. He will return the favor._ His conscience sounded sinisterly like Yakov nowadays, which might be have been the reason why Viktor rarely heeded it. He didn't require a nanny anymore. And he didn't want counsel. Not from anyone.

Something bumped Viktor’s calf. Makkachin whined endearingly and shoved his head through the space between the door and the jamb. Yuuri’s expression changed again, this time genuinely. Viktor could not reconcile this Yuuri with last night’s Yuuri, and it made the pain in his head worsen. This was too much, too early. He did not realize Yuuri had knelt and was offering a tentative hand to the dog until Makkachin knocked Viktor and the door aside and pranced happily to Katsuki’s proffered fingers.

“He remembers me,” Katsuki said, no smugness to the words. Viktor scowled.

“He’ll worship anyone who gives him a moment of attention,” he snapped, and Yuuri’s smugness returned. “Don’t be too impressed.” Katsuki tilted his head and smiled.

“I suppose people do become their dogs, then,” he remarked. It took Viktor a moment to decode the jab.

“Don't flatter yourself.” God, he was a mess. When had Yuuri become better at these games than Viktor? Had he talked himself to near death in solitary, practicing such barbs? The thought was almost amusing. “And get away from my dog.”

Katsuki’s eyes drifted up Viktor’s person. He pulled his hands from the dog's fur and held them up in a gesture of innocence. “I’m not going to hurt your dog,” he said levelly. “I wouldn't--”

“I don't care,” Viktor snapped. “I don't care. I don’t trust you.”

Yuuri stood, slowly, and he did not take his eyes off Viktor’s face as he did so. Viktor Nikiforov had a sudden, suffocating memory of Yuuri pinning him against his bedroom door and fucking all sense of reason out of him, right here. It had been Viktor’s birthday.

_Jesus Christ._ Chris was right, per usual. Viktor was pathetic and single-minded and it was going to be the death of him. Couldn't he have picked someone less venomous than Katsuki Yuuri to worship? It was making it very difficult to think rationally when every time he looked at him he had vivid memories of Katsuki doing _that_.

Behind the door, Viktor’s hand curled into a fist. His fingernails cut half moons into his palm.

Katsuki Yuuri said quietly, “I suppose that's wise.”

Of course it was. Viktor was always wise when he was doing the opposite of what he wanted. At the moment he couldn't decide if he wanted to kill Katsuki or fuck him, and so he would do neither.

Exhausted, he pinched the bridge of his nose and the remembered the fucked state of his face. Pain throbbed all the way to his jaw, and he scowled. “Go alone. I don't care. I can't be bothered to send anyone with you.”

For a moment, Katsuki looked innocently surprised. Then he dipped his head. The action was almost reverent this time. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you.”

“Whatever.” Petulant. Viktor hooked a finger through Makkachin’s collar to ensure he didn't follow Yuuri down the hall. Viktor would not be able to handle him switching allegiance so easily. “Just remember your family, Yuuri.”

Katsuki leveled his gaze. There was nothing but bare understanding in his expression. Inexplicably, Viktor was afraid.

“Don't worry,” Katsuki said softly. “I always do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name Stopya Likhoyedev comes from a minor character in The Master and Margarita. Agrafena Svetlov and the four other names listed in the article are from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, which is a Russian classic about three brothers accused of the murder of their father. It's a bitch of a long read, but I'd recommend it.
> 
> Krasnoyarsk is a Siberian city that holds a maximum security prison. Also, because I believe I forgot to clarify before, "bratva" is the Russian term for its mafia. It means "brotherhood," and the concept originates from the Soviet era.
> 
> La Sagrada Familia is Barcelona's great unfinished cathedral, designed by Antoni Gaudí and whose production has slowed since its architect got hit by a tram and died back in the 1920s (really). Its history is really interesting, and the place itself is gorgeous--Gaudí buildings are the only things worth visiting if you ever find yourself in Barcelona, honestly. It's estimated it will have taken more than one hundred years to build by the time it's completed. I'm like 99% sure Phichit takes a selfie in front of it when they're in Barcelona in the show, but I can't quite remember.
> 
> I've written up to halfway through chapter six, and hope to continue posting every weekend, but I'm working full time so we'll see how well I actually keep that promise.
> 
> Once again, thank you so much for all the comments and kudos! I was going to start replying to a bunch of them last night, then realized I was probably just slight not-sober enough to make a fool of myself, so I'll do that later. Feel free to drop a comment or question if you have one. Thank you again!
> 
> xx


	5. Hamartia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (content warnings for this chapter: brief mention of suicide near end, as well as mild drug use)

_if you want the keys to the rental, meet me for breakfast._

_don't come in until i say so._

_fifth table from the door. don't make a scene._

Phichit Chulanont slid carefully into the booth. He was dressed in casual clothing, his bangs hanging low in his eyes and his phone clutched like a lifeline in his right hand. Yuuri remembered contemplating handing him over to Nikiforov, and could not stomach the thought now. He was not of their side of the world, and he did not deserve what Viktor would do to him if discovered.

“Good morning,” he said quietly. Phichit snorted.

“Is it?” He fiddled with something on his phone, barely sparing Yuuri a passing glance. His eyes merely flicked upwards, then cast back to more important matters on the screen. “Nice face.”

Yuuri’s hand drifted unconsciously to his split lip, before he pinned his own wrist carefully to the table. _Vulnerable_. He hated that mask, because it was the truest. He would not wear it for someone like Phichit Chulanont.

“He looks worse.”

Chulanont laughed. “If you say so.”

_He does._ Yuuri didn't know where this desire to impress the other man came from, but he quashed it immediately. He pursed his lips. “I ordered breakfast for you.”

Phichit tilted his head, met his gaze at an angle. Searching. Perhaps he was attempting to glean a reason for such kindness. Yuuri knew it was not kindness. He knew he was endangering himself and Phichit every moment they spent at the same table, in the same building, in the same city. But Yuuri was also tired of eating on his own, of watching his back on his own, of fearing Viktor on his own. Phichit Chulanont’s company was loud and naive and he would never, ever understand Katsuki Yuuri, but he was better than nothing.

After a pause, Phichit said, “Thank you.”

Yuuri didn't like being scrutinized. He'd had enough of people trying to divine all his secrets from him in the last two days. Quickly, he fished the rental key out of his pockets and slid it surreptitiously across the counter. “There. It's in a parking garage on Frunzenskaya. Not too close to Nikiforov, so don't worry about that.”

“Thank you.” This was followed by another long look. Yuuri’s fingers twitched.

“What?” he snapped quietly. “What's wrong with you?”

“Nothing's wrong with me,” Phichit answered defensively. “Why do you get so offended by me looking at you?”

“I _don’t_ ,” Yuuri hissed, and oh god were they going to fight about _this_ here? How childish. How wonderful. It was exactly what he needed to shed his electric nerves, but not in public. In public, any intelligence about Katsuki Yuuri fighting with an unidentified Thai man was fair game for scouts, and a death sentence for them both. He forced himself to relax, closing his eyes and flexing his fingers. “I don’t.”

“Right.” Phichit had not relaxed, was still raring for a fight he would not win. “I hope you lied better last night. I can't imagine he wouldn't kill you for an attempt like that.”

Their server chose this moment to deliver their plates, saving Yuuri from saying something loud that he would regret. He turned his best shy smile on her and fumbled through a Russian thank you like a proper tourist. His old accent slipped out purposefully, but it took some measured concentration not to bite down on it and slide into his fluent Russian. He had spent so long strangling it that even his old voice was something alien, a betrayal. Perhaps there was something to be said about this, but it was definitely not that Yuuri wasn't dedicated to his covers.

The waitress smiled, like he was amusing, and asked slowly if they needed anything else. Yuuri shook his head, wide-eyed, and she wished them a good breakfast and then muttered “fucking tourists” as she left.

“Bitch,” Yuuri confided in Phichit with a knowing smile. He tilted his head to the side, raised his eyebrows. “You were saying?”

Phichit snorted and attacked his eggs with a fork. “Okay, got it. My apologies.”

Yuuri nodded once, and the game was no longer fun. Taunting Chulanont, pretending to be this thing he was not, lying to himself that he knew was he was doing--it was all some private ruse to convince himself that Katsuki Yuuri had not lost his touch. But he had, he had, and he didn't know what to do now that it was gone.

Confronting Viktor this morning had been marginally less terrifying only because Viktor himself had been a mess. Viktor was never a mess, except in those impassioned moments in which he wanted to be, and the lack of balance had made it easier for Yuuri to face him. But he knew it would not be the same the next time: lying would be harder, and pretending like Yuuri wasn't scared out of his wits of being discovered would be damn near impossible.

“So what happened last night?” inquired Phichit. “I’ve got to send updates to Fuchū, you know, so they don't think you're just fucking around.”

“I’m not fucking around,” Yuuri said automatically, and he did not miss the way Chulanont looked at him, like _Yuuri_ was the exhausting one. He narrowed his eyes.

“I didn't imply that you were,” Phichit said. “I'm just asking--”

“It went fine. He didn't kill me. I’m not allowed to leave the house without his permission and his kitchen staff tried to poison me, but everything else went fine.” He did not mention the kiss, Giacometti, or the encounter this morning. Such unnecessary details would only make Yuuri look weak.

“Well, it sounds like you've got everything completely under control then,” Phichit remarked dryly. Yuuri did not respond. His phone had buzzed.

_please don't kill civilians on my street. it makes me look bad_

“What?” Phichit had seen the expression on his face but not divined what it meant. Yuuri’s pulse beat erratically in his throat.

“I’ve got to go.” Yuuri stood, too suddenly. Across the restaurant, their waitress was having a conversation with another server. Both looked to him, to the rapid rise and fall of his chest, with new interest.

Viktor shouldn't have his number. There was no reason for him to know it, no reason for his name to be in Yuuri’s contacts unless he’d put it there himself. Viktor Nikiforov’s name, his number, on Katsuki Yuuri’s government phone.

There would be consequences for this. On both sides.

“I’ve got to go.” He was taking his wallet out, pulling fistfuls of rubles out of the billfold. He cast them on the table blindly.

“Wait.” Phichit, at least, had maintains some modicum of self-control. He was still seated, though he gripped the edge of the table tightly. “What are you doing? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Yuuri snapped, and the word was in Russian. He felt eyes on him, diners turn to look at the tourist who was not a tourist making a goddamn scene. He corrected himself, quietly, in Japanese. “I don't know. I need to go.”

“I can't speak Russian,” Phichit reminded him, eyes wide. “I can't even read the bill.”

Yuuri stared at him, incredulous. “I don't care,” he snapped after a moment. “Fuck, figure something out. I’m not a babysitter!”

“Katsuki--”

Yuuri ground his teeth. “Listen. I need to leave. Tell her--tell the waitress that if she has problems, _prokonsul'tirovat'sya s Katsuki Yuuri_ , yes? Tell her exactly that.”

She was on her way to the table when Yuuri passed her. “Money’s on the table,” he told her, in flawless, unaccented Russian. He did not wait to witness her reaction, but he hoped it was enjoyable.

He had to leave. He had to find Nikiforov, before he found Yuuri.

* * *

 

“Don’t move.”

“Ow, ow--Jesus Christ, Mila--”

“I said don't _move_.” Mila shoved the red tube between her teeth and squeezed his jaw tighter in her fingers. Viktor flinched.

“You don't need to be so rough,” he chastised, more meekly now that she had a firm grip on his face. His very bruised face. “You're doing that on purpose.”

“Hold this.” Mila spat the tube into his lap, and Viktor caught it on instinct. His eyes widened.

“That's disgusting.”

“Can't bring myself to care,” Mila sang. She smeared more of the red cream on his face, and Viktor did not flinch this time, though it was cold and the pressure made his skin tingle unpleasantly. Mila said it would hide the bruising. He trusted her on this, because it was his only option. “You brought this upon yourself. If I were you--”

“I _know_ what you would have done,” Viktor snapped. “I don't need a reminder.”

Mila tipped his chin up with her fingers, so their gazes met. “It might do you well to follow other people’s advice sometimes, Nikiforov,” she said tightly. “Chris and I are not here just to fix you up when you get your face punched in and put your fists through walls.”

“No lectures.” His tone was cold. Mila’s expression matched.

“You can give me any order you’d like in front of the others and I will follow it, Viktor.” She set upon his face with the foundation now, just as roughly. “But I will say what I like in private. I’m your friend, and you need friends to tell you the things your employees are too scared to say to your face.”

This gave Viktor pause. “What are they saying?” he demanded. “Mila--”

She looked at him boredly. He knew what they were saying--generally. It was the same as what the papers were saying. He was losing his touch. Mila sighed.

“They're saying that you need to _get a grip_ , babe. That's what they're saying. And it's not just Leroy.”

Viktor caught her wrist as it passed over his face. Mila made a surprised sound in her throat. “Who is saying that, Mila?” he growled. “Give me names.”

Mila tilted her head and gave him an utterly unimpressed look. “A good chunk of your closest, actually, Nikiforov. Popovich. Yakov. Baranovskaya, too.” Narrowed eyes. She was daring him to make a move, so she could hurt him for it. “Me.”

“Go fuck yourself, Babicheva,” Viktor spat, and he made as if to stand. She caught his face between her fingers too quickly, pressed her torso against his so the only way he could stand from the bed would be to kick her weight out from under her. Doing so would be inviting a fight Viktor was not sure he would win.

He stayed where he was.

“Listen. Viktor.” Red acrylic nails dug into his jaw uncomfortably. “I am your friend. This is why I will tell you that you are being a complete suicidal moron.”

He glared. Mila continued.

“I understand this is a lot for you, and god _bless_ me, I’m trying to be sympathetic. But I will not watch you destroy everything we have over him again. You won’t win, and you know that you won't. The only thing Katsuki will give you is a very painful death.”

“I don't want a _fucking_ \--”

Mila’s grip on his jaw tightened. “Shut up. God, do you think the rest of us didn't mourn him? Whatever you have--had--with him didn't exist in a vacuum. But, Viktor, watching you for the last three years was painful enough. I’m not going to sit by and watch you let him kill you for the sake of _love_. He doesn't love you anymore, if he ever did, and I know you're a romantic and you mean well, but trying to _fix_ him is going to get you and Plisetsky hurt.”

“That's not what I want.” He had her wrist in his fingers again, and he tightened his grip until she hissed and let go. “Don't patronize me, Mila. I’m not going to _fix_ him. I’m not stupid.”

“Then act like an adult, instead of some lovesick teenager. Be a businessman.” She shook out her wrist with a few low curses and applied the cap to her makeup. “Kill Katsuki.”

Viktor closed his eyes. “You know that I--”

Mila laughed, scornfully. “That you can’t, I am well aware.” She fixed him with a contemptuous look. “Viktor, answer me honestly. Do you think Katsuki’s honor code is anywhere near as lenient as yours is?”

Viktor sighed. “Mila--”

“You threatened his family, Viktor. You know more than anyone that that doesn't go over well with him. He’s not forgiving.”

He had had enough of this. He tightened his jaw and looked away from her. Above him, Mila’s voice softened.

“I don't want you to hurt yourself, Viktor,” she murmured. “That’s all. I’ve seen enough of Katsuki to know what is coming to you, if you're not careful.”

Finally, finally, he found the words he was looking for. “I am being careful,” he retorted. “I’m not _lovesick_. I can handle myself, Mila. I appreciate the concern, but kindly fuck off.”

Mila Babicheva looked at him, and there was goddamn _pity_ in her eyes. Viktor stood impulsively, knocking her off balance and forcing her back a few paces. “Are you done with my face?” he asked quietly. Dangerously. “Because I’m done here.”

He was a good deal taller than she, standing. It was wonderful how a simple difference in height could shift power dynamics so. Mila would never dare to say those things to him like this. He was too much more.

Smirking, Babicheva reached up to pat his cheek. “Just as pretty as ever now. I’m done.”

His meeting with Beskudnikov had been rescheduled for today. Viktor did not feel up to discussing Kremlin politics with a smug criminal affairs official today anymore than he did on the original date. But Chris was right, and he was in enough jeopardy without cutting ties with the few powerful people he still had in his pocket nowadays.

Katsuki’s old electric Fisker was back in its space when Viktor joined Mila in the garage, and he was sitting on the hood of the Camaro, looking like an editorial shoot of the irreverent son of some Japanese business tycoon. He was fiddling with his phone, the heel of his shoe hooked onto the car’s grill. The disrespect was intentional. He knew how Viktor felt about that car.

“Yuuri.”

Katsuki did not look up. His bangs hung in his face, his sweater sleeves pushed up to his elbows to reveal the entwining tattooed branches and fish and hounds that marked him yakuza. He had taught Viktor each and every symbolic meaning of the ink on his body once, the same night Viktor had taught him the secrets of his body too.

Viktor tastes blood and realized he had bitten his own tongue. It was a welcome distraction.

“Viktor. Don't touch my things.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Katsuki Yuuri looked at him. The glasses rounded out his face somehow, made him disarmingly innocent in appearance. “My phone. Don't touch it.”

“Why?” Viktor understood now. He was angry about Giacometti stealing his phone the night before. Or perhaps he was more angry that he had failed to notice the theft. “Do you have something to hide from me?”

“Privacy is a right I've been long deprived,” Katsuki said softly. “I will have it returned to me.”

Viktor laughed. “Not in my house, you won't.” Unbalanced, he yanked open the Camaro’s door too roughly and winced. Silent apologies to the automobile. “And you won't kill anybody else either. Not without my permission. Do you understand?”

“How did you steal it? I had it when…” His tone was thoughtful, traitorously so. Perhaps he did have something to hide on that phone, to be so damn preoccupied by it. Viktor would have to ask Popovich to look into it.

“Chris stole it last night. Georgi got past your password, and put my number in.” Viktor shrugged. “He's an art thief. Samsungs are easy compared to top of the line museum security systems, I suppose.”

“You could have just asked.” His voice was still guarded, but soft. Curiously so.

Viktor said, “I thought we’d repeat a bit of old tradition instead.” Katsuki’s eyes flickered to his, and he slid off the hood of the Camaro. Rather than step toward Viktor, he took a wary step back. “And would you have let me, if I’d just asked?” He wouldn't, and they both knew it. Yuuri blinked at him.

“Where are you going?” he asked abruptly.

“Meeting,” Viktor said, taken aback by the question. “You're not invited.”

“I see.” Yuuri blinked again. This exchange was unnerving Viktor. With a jerk of his head, he directed Mila to the passenger side of the car.

“You're welcome to the gym or the library. Anything else is off limits while I’m gone.”

Katsuki nodded. He was too quiet. Viktor did not trust him.

“Thank you.” Unconsciously, he twisted his collar around his fingers. Viktor was definitely going to consult Popovich about that phone. Yuuri may have thought he was a good liar, but his tells were the same as they'd always been. He was hiding something, and he was betraying himself every moment he spent fidgeting in front of Viktor.

To see him so stripped to the bone, so nervous in his presence, was vindicating after the events of last night. Viktor would have loved to watch Katsuki Yuuri squirm for the rest of the day. But he had places to be.

“Don't thank me. Remember my terms.” He pulled the Camaro into reverse and sped out of the spot without checking the rearview. Yuuri watched. His expression was a black hole.

Viktor wondered vaguely what it would take to make Katsuki Yuuri feel things again. For more than a moment.

It would probably cost him too much.

* * *

 

He did not go to the library. There were too many ghosts there. Mostly ghosts of Yuuri, surely, and ghosts of oneself were the most difficult to avoid.

His hand was still wrapped in the bandages Chris had applied last night, after Yuuri had put his hand through the wall. His knuckles throbbed, and the gauze pulled at the open cuts on his hand when he unwound it. Self-destruction was an entertaining pastime. Yuuri set about it.

He changed in the guest room that dually functioned as his luxury prison cell and padded barefoot to the basement. There he found a new set of gauze and tape and redid Giacometti’s work to make it functional for fighting. Wrapping his own hands was a challenge, especially with his left hand incapacitated so. He managed to cut the tape with his teeth and make a passable imitation of what Nikiforov had used to do for him. It was nothing in which he’d want to fight an actual opponent, but acceptable work for warmups.

The gym was empty. Yuuri liked it that way.

The mats beneath his feet provided a bit of spongy resistance, making it easier to bounce back after a punch. Yuuri had taken lots of hits on these mats, landed on his face and his ass more times than he’d like to count. But they were worlds more comfortable than a church floor.

He bounced on them a few times, experimenting with the feel and his own weight. He’d practiced in his cell at Fuchū as often as he had been able, but the feel was different. Punching concrete walls was a poor substitute for a live partner, and the guards would revoke various communal privileges for damaging government property. He’d had to practice in the dark.

The first punch to the bag with his right fist felt great. It had been a while since Yuuri had been allowed something like this. Quiet concentration. Privacy. No masks, no lies, just this. Rhythm.

The next hit with his left hand hurt like hell. Yuuri hissed, withdrew his hand, and saw the swelling of his fingers tugging at the gauze. He would ruin his hand doing this. At the very least, he would prolong the injury for another week. This was what he got for adopting Viktor’s temper. He knew better.

Yuuri continued.

He was very good at blocking out pain. Minako had ensured this through various dubious methods of instruction. Katsuki Yuuri had been a weepy child, and Minako had worked very hard to cure him of such sentimentality through corporal punishments. Yuuri had been grateful for this on many occasions, and he was especially grateful now.

_Right, left, right, left, right._

He paused, shook out his left hand. Started up again. He felt the skin on his knuckles chafe and burn, felt the blood seeping into the bandages, but the sensation was as if on another plane of consciousness. He was aware of the pain, but he did not acknowledge it. And so he continued.

Once, he had broken his right hand on a trafficking assignment. Shattered it against a Korean man’s face for the way he had looked at Yuko, and for the things he had said to her because Yuuri could not speak Korean and Yuko could. While the bones in his hands were screwed in place and coaxed into reknitting themselves awkwardly back together, Yuuri had learned ambidexterity. Minako had been pleased, had remarked that if all it took for Yuuri to learn a new skill was to break his bones, she would have started snapping fingers years ago.

Thus, Yuuri became a fast learner. At everything. Fear became a precursor to success in all that he did.

His right hand was his weakness now, and his right side his liability. Yuuri had worked to correct this, but he had also worked to ensure that no one ever learned about such a weakness. Only three people in the world did, and they were the three people who knew him well enough that, even if he had not told them, they would have been able to discern. Yuuri’s body was damningly truthful when one was familiar enough with it.

Vaguely, he was aware of the blisters blooming as he worked. Immeasurable time had passed, and his left hand had swollen impressively. The handwraps were too tight now, chafing against the sides of his palm. Consequences.

Yuuri continued.

Fighting was like sex in that, while it was happening, there was room for blissfully little else in Yuuri’s head. Fractured memories, soundbites, the whisper of things that had occurred in the past--those things were allowed because he could never quite get rid of them anyway. (He had anxiety to thank for that.) But the rest was a nonissue when he fought. Anything that messed with his focus was unwelcome, and thus absent from his head.

He slammed his right fist into the bag hard, and it swung back at him heavily. Yuuri caught it, set it right, and started anew. Blood trickled down from his wrist, dripping to the plastic-coated mat with an audible and cheery sound.

_Better a lapdog than a euthanized attack dog._ Yuuri had been the best damn attack dog Petersburg had ever seen. Christophe Giacometti could get fucked.

At some point within the hour, his left hand had gone completely numb. Dimly, Yuuri recognized that this meant he should have stopped long ago, that he should never have started. He was going to ruin his hand for what? Peace of mind? There was none of that to be had anyway. Katsuki Yuuri didn't deserve such things, and the universe knew it.

_Yuuri, baby, what are you doing to yourself?_

Yuuri stopped, and unwound the gauze around his left hand. Now that he was done, he remembered how the heat in his hand had been unbearable, but this nothingness was more unbearable. Distantly, he recalled the words nerve damage. His fingers, the ones that still retained feeling, trembled.

_The money’s not worth it. He’s not worth it._

He had pushed himself too far. How many times had he chastised Viktor to be conscious of his own mortality, to remember his limits. And Yuuri had gone and fucked up his hand for forty minutes of an empty mind. Entirely idiotic.

_Yuuri, please. Yuuri, come home._

Calmly, Yuuri sat down on the mats. Perspiration dripped from the ends of his hair and trickled down his spine, but he was shivering.

Yuko would know what to do. Yuko always knew what to do, always knew how to fix him when Yuuri himself did not. She had been against his assignment in Saint Petersburg for this very reason. She had never liked Viktor, never let herself become blinded by the lucrative opportunities of an alliance with the Plisetskys like Yuuri and Minako had. Yuko was smart.

Yuko was not here.

_Yuuri, please don't do this. It’ll kill you._

It certainly had.

Time passed unforgivingly while Yuuri sat on the mats, staring at his crooked fingers. By the time he hauled himself to his knees and set about scrubbing the blood off the floor, the substance had become thick and nearly dry. And he was no longer alone in the room.

“Jesus. What did you do?”

Yuuri sat back on his heels and narrowed his eyes. The absence of glasses made it impossible to sort facial features from one another or find any sort of definition in the stranger’s appearance, but the voice was easy. Yuri Plisetsky, with stoic bodyguard in tow.

Conscious of his agreement with Nikiforov, Yuuri said nothing. He gave a brief dismissive wave and turned his attention back to his task. With some measure of self-consciousness, he tucked his clawed left hand into his chest. He would answer no questions about it. He would fix it himself.

Bloody cleanup completed, Yuuri packed his things and made for the door. Plisetsky attempted to engage him with some cheap insults, but Yuuri was too focused on things far away for them to hit their mark. Perhaps Plisetsky mistook his silence for arrogance, for the onslaught became more vicious as Yuuri neared the door. Katsuki did not care.

“Hey. What the hell did you do to your fucking _hand?_ ”

And now he cared. Questions about his self-control (and the lack thereof) hit too close to home.

Rather than speaking, breaking Viktor’s terms, rather than start something irrevocable that Yuuri was not sure would end bloodlessly, he simply paused before the door. Muscles in his shoulders bunched. He turned to look at Yuri Plisetsky, and he inclined his head respectfully.

It was an obvious warning. Plisetsky would not challenge it. He was too smart. He was too afraid.

Katsuki Yuuri left. The door slammed nicely behind him.

A cold shower alleviated some of the swelling in his hand, but did nothing to improve his mood. Water sloped down his trembling shoulders and plastered his hair to his face. Yuuri's hand shook when he splayed his fingers and held them out in front of his face. They were still numb.

_You’ll be the death of yourself one day, my friend._

A bit of the characteristic Yuko chastisement would have been welcome at the moment. Any sort of conversation with someone from home would have been welcome, though Yuuri dared not let his mind wander to specific individuals. The current problem was enough without concerning himself with those which awaited him in Hasetsu.

Katsuki Yuuri leaned against the shower wall. The tile was cool pressed flush against his shoulder blades, the sensation particularly grounding. He closed his eyes.

“Minako wants to see you.”

“She does?” Yuko did not seem interested in this fact. She pulled several notes of foreign currency from the inside of her bra. “You know, the least they could do would be exchange this for yen _before_ they stuff it in my underwear.”

Twenty-one-year-old Katsuki Yuuri snorted. “At least the exchange rate is nice.”

Yuko hummed a vague note of agreement. “Suppose.” She folded the notes twice and tucked the wad back against her breasts. Her gaze flickered up to Yuuri. “What does Minako want? I’m working.”

Yuuri shrugged. “Didn’t say. An assignment, I guess.”

Yuko pursed her lips. “I’m making enough money on the floor,” she said cautiously. “I don't need an assignment.” Yuuri raised an eyebrow.

“That's not my decision to make,” he reminded her. “And I don't think it's yours either.”

“Okay, _Minako_ ,” Yuko snapped, but there was amusement where there had been apprehension in her tone. “You sound like her more and more every day.”

The thought was pleasing to Yuuri. Minako was brilliant, talented, sinfully famous. Yuuri would kill--had killed--to become Minako one day. But something about Yuko’s teasing didn't sit right within his chest.

“I’m just passing along the message,” he said quietly. “I don't mean to be--”

Yuko laughed. The sound made Yuuri start. “Oh, Yuuri,” she said kindly. “You're going to have to learn to stop apologizing if you want to get anywhere in this place.”

Minako had said the same. Somehow, Yuuri couldn't quite get the hang of being unapologetic. It seemed to require more confidence than he possessed at the moment.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, then felt the heat flush across his face. “I mean--”

Yuko snorted. “Go make some money, Yuuri. I’ll tell you what Minako says if I make it out alive.” The comment was in jest, yet it was a poor choice of words. There was no certainty whether anyone would make it out of a Minako assignment alive ever. That was the nature of the job.

Yuuri frowned. Words gathered on his tongue, but he could not sort them into coherence. Reluctantly, he left Yuko to her own devices, and went to work.

There was always a demographic for Yuuri’s talents in the underground. He was one of Minako’s few male dancers, and the only one who performed and worked assignments interchangeably. He even had a few regular patrons out on the floor, and he could always count on a few hundred thousand yen by the end of the night.

Katsuki Yuuri was very good at what he did, and what he did was make money.

He had made a good eighty thousand by the time Yuko returned, shuffling awkwardly in that way she did when she wanted Yuuri’s attention but did not want to interrupt. Yuuri didn't know why she didn't just call him over. She knew he would give up any sum of money for her, any day.

He left the pole empty and padded away without apology to his audience. Yuuri didn't care whether they stayed or not. The expression on Yuko’s face was shattering.

“What?” Yuuri murmured, concerned. He bent his head for privacy. Yuko’s hair was up, wisps of her bangs clinging to her damp temples. She looked suddenly very vulnerable. “Yuko, what did she give you?”

In lieu of a response, Yuko’s hand closed around his wrist and yanked him to a deeper corner. Yuuri thought perhaps she was shivering.

“I don't want it,” she whispered. “I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't--”

“Yuko.” It was Yuuri’s turn to grab her wrists. He held them gently, to ground her and not to frighten her. Contact was stabilizing, if not necessarily comforting. “Yuko, what did she give you?”

Yuko blinked at him. Yuuri was taller, though he was not older, and she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. It was not like Yuko to lose her head over an assignment. That was Yuuri’s job.

“Russians,” she murmured. “She gave me the Russians.”

“Russians?” That was all? They got plenty of Russians in Minako’s playgrounds. Yuuri turned involuntarily, casting his gaze over his bare shoulder. The club was dark and obscenely fluorescent at the same time, and he could not separate bodies from neon shadows. “Who are they?”

Yuko’s eyes were dark, pupils swallowing wide irises. She whispered, “Plisetskys.”

Yuuri dropped her wrists without a conscious decision to do so. His lips thinned. Minako was playing games. “They aren't for you.”

“Yuuri--”

“She doesn't want you to take them. You don't speak Russian, Yuko.” A deep, dark thrill went through him. Terror tinged with excitement. “It’s a test.”

“For you?” Yuko sounded skeptical. Hopeful. Yuuri understood. Yuko had not enjoyed herself on their last drug run to Russia. It was too far from her element. Russian business was conducted very differently from how she and Yuuri had been taught.

_Plisetskys. Here._ Katsuki Yuuri was already leaving. “I’ll cover you,” he promised. “I’ll talk to Minako. This is what she wants anyway.” He was certain of it. “You can take over where I was. I’ll fix it.”

“Watch yourself, Yuuri.” Her tone was pleading. “You know the stories.” And Yuuri did. The Plisetsky mob was built on the backs of bloody dynasties. Minako might be renowned in the east for her cocaine and her dancers and her assassins, but the Plisetskys ruled the west, and had done so for decades. Such power didn't come without an unsavory reputation.

“I’ll handle it,” Yuuri promised again. But he was not sure he could.

He threw open Minako’s office door without announcing his presence, and she looked bemusedly up from her desk.

“No,” she said, primly, right away. Yuuri scowled. Games.

“You don't really mean for Yuko to have them, do you?”

Okukawa Minako steepled her fingers. She was somewhere in her forties but looked in her twenties, and oftentimes now Yuuri found deference difficult. When he had been younger, he had revered Minako. Now, more often she unnerved him. She had replaced his own mother here in Tokyo, and he resented more than that fact the clear notion that she knew it.

“I mean exactly what I told her I meant. She’ll take the Plisetskys. I have business to conduct with them, and she is best at loosening purses ahead of time.”

“Minako.” The lack of an honorific, even a too familiar one, was devastatingly western of him. Minako’s eyes narrowed. It was disrespect and a reminder and something to prove all at once, and Yuuri had intended it. “That is cruel, even for you.”

“ _Cruel_ ,” Minako sneered. “Where did you come under the impression that I strive to be _kind_ , Katsuki Yuuri? America?” Her mouth twisted. “Sending you there was a mistake. You’ve become too bold.”

Yuuri set his jaw. He did not believe he had changed. He was still her student, and he still followed her orders. But not this. Not at Yuko’s expense. “Let me take the Plisetskys. I’ll do a better job.”

“Did Yuko send you in here to plead her case?” Minako snapped. “She is twenty-two, and she needs to grow up someday. Today is that day. She will do as I tell her, and _you_ will not _fucking_ interfere.”

His fingers curled and uncurled experimentally. Minako leaned back into her chair, eyebrows raised. She waited.

Yuuri said, “Forcing Yuko to take the Russians would be a disaster, and you know it. After Moscow, she won't take any European patrons, but you think she’s going to charm the Plisetskys into your hands?” He scowled. “These games aren’t cute, Minako.”

“Neither is this hero complex, Yuuri.” Her tone was dangerous. “Learn your place. Get out of my office.”

Yuuri did not leave, though survival instinct pushed him backwards a step. He clenched his teeth and regained his ground, and then some. He placed his hands on Minako’s desk.

“Yuko can’t speak Russian. I can. I am the right choice.” Each word was like pulling teeth with a pliers. Talking back to Minako never boded well. Yuuri’s nerves were frayed. “Who exactly are you expecting?”

A small smile danced at the corners of her lips. “Why does it concern you? They’re not your guests.”

“They will be.” His fingers trembled imperceptibly. Yuuri pressed his knuckles harder against the desk. “Tell me.”

Minako leaned forward, meeting his eyes calmly. She was the picture of dangerous poise. Yuuri was dressed like a club stripper and trembling and on his last shred of bravery. He would lose if this carried on much longer. Both he and Yuko would suffer for his insubordination.

Minako said, “Viktor Nikiforov and all the Plisetsky elite,” and Yuuri’s nerve snapped. He sagged against the desk.

“You wouldn't do that to her,” he whispered, but he knew Minako would. She was not kind, and she was not forgiving of past mistakes. If she suspected Yuko had an aversion to brokering deals with Russians after nearly dying over a stupid mistake in Moscow last year, she would not be sympathetic. She would force Yuko into as many deals with Russians as it took for her to get over herself.

_Viktor Nikiforov_.

But Yuuri could work with that.

He drew up to his full height, squared his shoulders, and narrowed his eyes. Minako smiled like she was expecting a scene.

“Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri said, voice laced with scorn. “After all those rumors, you really think _Yuko_ is going to be his type?” Said rumors were the spawn of vicious smear campaigns and some presumed shred of truth, of Nikiforov’s sexual preferences and the hedonism fraught in his inner circles. Yuuri had read some outrageous hypotheticals about the nature of the relationship between Nikiforov and that Swiss man he called his right hand, and some more realistic theories. And there was truth to every rumor.

“Oh.” Minako raised her eyebrows, folded her hands, leaned back in her chair. “You think _you_ are Nikiforov’s type? That’s very presumptuous of you, Yuuri.”

Yuuri closed his eyes and steeled himself against uncertainty. “I don't know, and I don't care,” he said levelly. “Regardless of if I am or not, I will be a much better candidate for the job than Yuko.”

Minako pretended to consider it. She tilted her head, and the smile that did not reach her eyes became crueller by the moment. “I don't like this penchant for altruism, Katsuki Yuuri,” she said.

Yuuri had a sudden vivid desire to slam her against the plexiglass second-story window behind her. It would not break, and she would not fall, but she would have one bitch of a concussion.

But he shook the thought from his head. Unfettered rage was not useful. In negotiations with the likes of Okukawa Minako, one was better off feeling nothing at all.

So Katsuki Yuuri returned her gaze stonily. “It is not altruism. It’s business.” It was what Minako would want to hear. She would hardly even care that it was so obviously a lie.

“Well.” Minako smiled, spread her hands. Her expression was both searching and undeniably pleased. _A test_. Yuuri had been correct. Yuko may have been a piece, but she was never been a player on this particular board. This--all of this--had been about Yuuri. “I can hardly argue with good business. Take the Plisetskys, if you want them so much.”

Yuuri did not want them. But Yuko wanted them less, and so here he was. Deals with the devil, on the pretense of good. Minako was a master manipulator, and Yuuri had shot himself in the fucking foot.

Fantastic.

“They arrive in half an hour,” Minako was saying. Her eyes were still searching his face. “Do not disappoint.”

Yuuri turned on his heel without a response. The compulsion to throw his own teacher through the window returned. He needed to leave. He needed to get a grip. He needed--

He didn't know.

He risked one last look at Minako before he left. She smiled at him knowingly, and the passable imitation of something maternal was vile. Yuuri had always been under the firm impression that creatures like he and Minako should not pretend to be people. They were monsters, and anything else was a lie. Sometimes they were possessed by the temporary desire to do good, to feel, but that, too, was a lie. And it was a lie that would ultimately destroy them.

Katsuki Yuuri matched her lips-stretched-over-teeth mask. Carnivorous. Monstrous. “Minako, you know better than anyone that I never disappoint.”

* * *

 

“Pay _attention_.”

Viktor Nikiforov started. Blinked. “I am. Paying attention.”

“No.” Chris’s voice was hushed and thinly patient. “You were dreaming.”

Viktor cut his gaze at him, subtly. He did not appreciate Christophe Giacometti assigning romantic characteristics to Viktor’s silence. He was silent because he was bored, and that was all. There was nothing romantic about feeling his brain slowly liquefy and drip out of his skull to the rhythm of Beskudnikov’s droning in the background.

Business now was torturous. Viktor kept up appearances by attending private councils and summits, but no one could stop him from driving a ballpoint pen through the center of his palm out of sheer agonizing boredom, if he fancied. No one could stop his mind from wandering either. _Dreaming_.

“What are we discussing?” he whispered, finally. He could not pick up the thread of conversation from where he had lost it. Chris gave him a look that was purely exasperated.

“You're better off staying home,” he hissed, in a manner in which few people could speak to Viktor Nikiforov and keep their teeth. “ _Useless_. Remind me next time to leave you there.”

“Don’t.” The word was out before Viktor could smother it. But he could not help it. Home was where Katsuki was. Viktor could not stomach that kind of proximity without Giacometti present to act as a buffer.

Chris stared at him. Then he shook his head. “Fine. Then pay attention,” he said, with a note of defeat. “This is yours.”

_This is yours_. Viktor had long dreamt of that sentence applied to nine-figure offshore bank statements, to wealth and luxury and sin he could hardly fathom at twenty-three, to vivid ink and sharp mouths and yielding expanses of a body beneath him. Never had he fantasized about endless meetings with crooked politicians who loved the sound of their own voices more than Nikiforov did his own, nor a floundering business that would devour him if he let himself slip further into obscurity.

Viktor Nikiforov sat up. He paid attention, for a few neverending moments.

_This is yours._

The Katsuki Yuuri who retained his Japanese accent, before it became one of the numerous casualties in his relentless ascent to the top, had been Viktor’s favorite. There was something so raw about Yuuri then, even when he was at his coldest. A sense that he did not belong and this very unbelonging was so potent that it just dripped off his tongue, and it oft made Yuuri angry. And anger made him vulnerable. Like he had something to prove to them all, though it had been a long time since Viktor had asked for any evidence at all of Yuuri’s competency. Viktor had been obsessed with that Yuuri.

_This is yours._

His Russian was not bad then, had never been bad. But it was a language for business, and his rigid syntax reflected that. For Katsuki Yuuri, Russian was a polite language with unbending rules and blunted edges. But Japanese was a living thing, flowing and visceral and truest to Katsuki’s guarded private self.

Japanese was the language he used when they fucked. Viktor could never forgive Japanese for that.

“What does it mean?” he asked, his eyes on the ceiling. Everything about him was heavy with exhaustion, but it was in no way unpleasant. Rather, it was unbelievably fucking pleasant. Viktor Nikiforov had not felt this good in months, and he had spent the last three years of his life on a cocktail of illegal drugs intended to falsify this exact feeling.

He decided that he would keep Katsuki Yuuri. Ecstasy was nothing compared to this.

Yuuri’s hand splayed on Viktor’s chest. The contact, light but still enough to destroy him, made Viktor’s eyes flutter shut for a moment. Softly, Katsuki laughed.

“Which part?”

Of course. There had been a lot said within the confines of the hour. Viktor would have to specify. But his mouth was not made for Japanese. He shrugged, and against his shoulder Katsuki made a gentle noise of protest. Hastily, Viktor apologized.

“I don't know. Whatever you just said.”

“Hmm.” Fingers tapped a lazy rhythm on his chest. Viktor wondered if Yuuri knew how completely this simple thing undid him. He must. He must think Viktor pathetically malleable. “A secret.”

Viktor protested, “Why is it a secret?” and hoped he did not come across as too eager to know. He had quickly regressed into something embarrassingly open. Eighteen again and lovestruck and willing to give anything for this memory of Katsuki Yuuri curled beside him, messy hair and soft mouth and thick black lashes fanned against his cheeks. How different he looked. How wonderfully unguarded. It had scarcely been three months, and yet Viktor was dangerously infatuated.

Previously he had tried to smother such infatuation by reminding himself that Katsuki Yuuri was a student of Okukawa Minako, and seduction and subsequent ruination was what Minako’s litter _did_ , and that Viktor Nikiforov--whose proffered reputation clearly suggested that he thought with his dick more than his brain--was an obvious candidate for such an assignment. Such attempts on his behalf to end these thoughts had been failures. Katsuki was much too pretty.

In the present, Yuuri’s lips trailed agonizingly along his collarbone. His hair was damp and wavy and whispered agonizingly against Viktor’s bare skin. Viktor Nikiforov shuddered, and Katsuki Yuuri made a satisfied noise deep in his throat. “Because,” he murmured against his neck, “I _want_ it to be a secret.”

“I don’t.” Electricity surged through him. It made him bold, and his voice sharpened too much. “What does it mean? Tell me.”

He felt Katsuki draw away. Viktor’s eyes flickered to his face, and he saw that all its previous sleepy softness had disappeared into wicked sharp lines. His mouth was a razor blade.

“Is that an order?” The words dripped with disdain. Viktor wanted the other Katsuki back. He saw enough of this one in public, had seen people fall and cut themselves on Katsuki’s edges too often to care for them now. Katsuki unmasked was with whom he had shared his bed tonight, and this Katsuki was a secret being which Viktor was bent on sequestering away for his own consumption.

But the tension was infectious. Nikiforov felt Yuuri’s scorn seep into his veins, and he matched his sneer. Viktor sat up, leaning casually on his forearm. He drawled, “Would you like it to be? Since we both know how well you take my orders.”

He should not have said it. But he had. His tongue was numb with the poison of the words.

“ _Watch_ yourself, Viktor Nikiforov.” He was close enough for Viktor to count his individual lashes. “I am not yours.”

_But you are._ At least, Viktor would ensure that he would be, one way or another. There was no room for negotiation when Viktor Nikiforov wanted something, and he wanted Katsuki Yuuri like he had wanted nothing before.

Viktor dropped the sneer. Leaned forward until they were mere centimeters apart. He breathed, “What would it take? To make you mine?”

Katsuki Yuuri’s mouth twisted into what was not quite a smile. Viktor was so fascinated by the wonders of his mouth that he did not register that he was again flat on his back until he felt Katsuki’s thighs tighten wonderfully around his hips. There was no oxygen in his lungs. Above him, bangs falling into his face, luminous with sweat and sex and something nearly goddamn angelic, Katsuki’s expression was hateful.

His fingers knotted into the sheets on either side of Nikiforov, but the moment Viktor attempted to touch him, to reach upwards for his face or his chest or all of the above, Yuuri had his wrists pinned above his head. Viktor’s shoulders strained at the twisted angle, and the words that escaped him were not voluntary nor polite. His breath hitched in his throat when Yuuri rolled his hips, and he bit his tongue and tasted copper when Katsuki Yuuri matched their bodies together, piece by piece. Soon there was room for absolutely nothing between their skins, as Viktor liked it.

_God_ , he wanted this. So much that he didn't even mind that this fuck carried with it a particularly different connotation. Earlier that night Yuuri had moved for Viktor’s benefit, with an agonizingly slow mouth and a tight grip on his thighs and breathy gasps demanding what and where Viktor wanted his talents displayed next. Katsuki Yuuri had been a fantastically generous lover in the early hours of the evening. Now, he was not. Now, this sex was for Yuuri’s benefit, and this Katsuki Yuuri went at no pace but his own.

The briskness with which he worked promised that Yuuri would soon become preoccupied with things other than Viktor’s mouth, but at the moment he had his lower lip between his teeth and he was doing wonderfully devastating things to Viktor’s hair. Proceeded to his jaw and below, where he drew a low whine out of Nikiforov by tracing the line of the throat with his tongue. Then down farther, and his jaw became level with his hips and Viktor bunched his hands in the sheets and trembled with the effort of keeping still.

_What would it take to make you mine?_ And Yuuri had an answer, through his voice was sex-rough and thick with Japanese vowels. He was back within view again, straddling Viktor’s hips, palms flat on his chest, and his cheeks were wonderfully flushed. Yuuri’s legs clenched around his torso again, and Viktor shuddered. Ecstatic.

Katsuki Yuuri laughed lowly and murmured, “Oh, much, _much_ more than you could ever afford, Viktor Nikiforov.”

Viktor would bet it all.

* * *

 

Yuuri’s back arched impossibly against the shower wall. His good hand scrabbled for purchase between the slick tiles, his head kicked back and slammed against the porcelain, mouth fell open in some bastard union between pain and ecstasy. The shower water had transitioned from cold to freezing temperatures in the time it had taken for Yuuri to finish, and his shoulders shook with more than leftover endorphins.

He was shivering, and he was laughing too. Bitterly, like he had just reached the realization that he was utterly pathetic. This was far from the first time Yuuri had had this epiphany. Still.

It had been a long time since he’d gotten off to the thought of Viktor Nikiforov. Masochism was one hell of a lifestyle choice.

_Embarrassing_. Yuuri let his head fall to the side and felt his cheek press flat against the tile. His breath still came in pants, his chest still rose and fell to the unrelenting rhythm inside his ribs. Pathetic. Three years, and he couldn't find a better muse than Nikiforov? Yuuri was a man of simple (if expensive) pleasures, but this had grown to be ridiculous. Surely there were other men in this goddamned world.

His ruined hand ached. The rest of him felt filthy. Yuuri disliked the sensation of shame that welled inside him.

_What are you doing?_ Whispers in the dark corners of a Tokyo nightclub which did not have answers. Six years later, Yuuri still could not provide them.

“Making money.” Drowning. Everything about this was already way over his head. “I'm fine, Yuko.”

She looked skeptical. Yuuri felt annoyance gather in the pit of his stomach. If Yuko wanted to be his mother, she would have to get in fucking line. He had done this for her. She had no right to be scornful of his methods.

Instead of pursuing conversation in the same vein of fluttery coddling, Yuko nodded. She took a small step backwards, away from Yuuri, and raised her chin to survey the Plisetskys over Yuuri’s shoulder. “What are they like?”

“Fine.” A beat which prompted elaboration. “Rich.” Yuuri dropped his voice and made himself laugh. “I was right about that Nikiforov.”

Yuko raised an eyebrow. An uncertain smile flickered on her lips. Behind Yuuri, he knew, Nikiforov lounged irreverently in a chair with a flute of champagne, like he had been made perfectly for this corner of the universe. Long, long legs crossed yet still stretched rudely before him. He took up even more space in Yuuri’s lungs than he did in real life. His hair was silvery-blue in the neon light, and the shadows gave him a certain immovable quality, as if he were hewn from marble. He was somewhat less terrifying than Yuuri had imagined. Worlds more interesting, too. “Right about what?”

Yuuri bent his head to her ear, his jaw brushing her cheek. He whispered, “He _loves_ it.”

Yuko’s eyes widened, and her mouth became a frown. “Be careful with him, Katsuki Yuuri.”

“Always,” Yuuri promised, but the tone was dismissive. “I know what I’m doing.”

Really, he wasn't sure. But saying the words made them seem truer.

“Minako says you have fifteen more minutes,” Yuko parroted suddenly, though her hands had crept up to her throat and her fingers twisted unconsciously where there was no collar to stretch and worry. Yuuri recognized her concern, and he was both comforted and irritated. Did she doubt him? “And to make them worthwhile.”

Yuuri dipped his head. “Of course.” He could do plenty with fifteen minutes.

* * *

 

Chris’ grip blossomed fingertip-shaped bruises into the flesh of Viktor’s inner arm. He could feel it through his suit jacket. The pain brought him back to the present.

“ _Again_ ,” Giacometti hissed. “For god’s sake, Viktor. He asked you a question.”

Viktor’s eyes widened. He had heard no question. At his left, Mila stepped on his foot with a four-inch Louboutin stiletto. “Next month. The gala.” Her mouth hardly moved. God, they really were his babysitters now, weren’t they? He’d become a true Plisetsky heir again. Deadweight, silver spoonfed, and a complete petulant brat. “The ketamine shipment.”

Viktor still did not understand. At a loss, he shook his head. “I’m sorry?”

“Fucking hell.” Chris’ grip had become an admirable substitute for the stranglehold he evidently preferred. Viktor looked pointedly at his forearm as Giacometti saved him from drowning. “ _Yes_. The ketamine is coming in a week prior. Distribution happens the night of the gala. Further details of the operation have no effect on any of your business, Beskudnikov. But thank you for your concern.”

The man nodded with an obsequious smile. His eyes lingered too long on Viktor’s face, then the anxious proximity of Babicheva and Giacometti to his person. His gaze was knowing.

Katsuki murmured, _For god’s sake, you can't even speak for yourself anymore._

Viktor stood too suddenly, Chris releasing his arm in surprise, Mila removing her foot and crossing her legs elegantly. She looked up at him in carefully crafted boredom. Viktor Nikiforov purposefully ignored her while he choked, “I--please--will you excuse me.”

He was not asking Beskudnikov’s permission, though the man spread his hands generously and nodded. Beside him, Yakov’s expression was stonily murderous.

Viktor took his pointed silence as an optimistic alternative to outright denying his request, and stepped back from the table. He strode from the room. He did not look back.

In the men’s restroom, he considered drowning himself beneath the faucet.

Then he reconsidered.

_Grow up._ Suicide ideation was no longer chic. Even if it was, chronically suicidal Katsuki Yuuri had terrified any illusions of romanticism in taking one's own life out of Viktor Nikiforov four years previously. Death terrified him now--an irony in his line of work which did not go unnoticed.

Besides, drowning victims became so unattractively bloated.

Viktor Nikiforov gripped the counter and appraised his own face. He looked a wreck, even with Mila’s makeup to conceal the bruising. He was wildly tempted to blame Katsuki Yuuri for such a transgression against the dogma of his childhood--that, regardless of the situation, it was unforgivable to look anything less than perfect. But this mess was a direct result of Viktor’s actions. How pathetic, to allow lust for a Japanese whore to get the best of him again. As if he hadn't learned his lesson the first time.

The Greeks had a word for such mortal flaws as Nikiforov’s. Viktor could not speak Greek, but he’d been forced into many classical literature courses by Lilia Baranovskaya when he was a child, and he knew the stories. _Hamartia_. The fatal flaw, the catalyst for the downfall of the tragic hero. Achilles’ had been pride. Medea, jilted foreign witch and child killer, had had no specific hamartia. She had survived her crimes: the murder of a king and a wife and Medea’s own children. Viktor would not survive his.

Viktor’s hamartia--if he could, by some error of the traditional Greek tragedy, identify it--was infatuation. Infatuation with Katsuki Yuuri, to be truly specific about the subject. It was going to kill him.

Perhaps falling in love with a nightclub stripper was forgivable when one was twenty-three, perhaps if one was not the patriarch of a crime syndicate spanning the majority of Eurasia. Perhaps. Unfortunately, Viktor was no longer the former, and he was certainly doomed to be the latter for the rest of his short life.

“Minako will see you in fifteen minutes.” Viktor was utterly fascinated by the way his accent softened the English into something elegant and new. Russian didn't do that. Russian _couldn’t_ do that.

With a poorly projected air of boredom, Viktor said, “Lovely.”

And he certainly was. He wore very little, like the rest of the club staff, but he was the only dancer to have every centimeter of skin covered with ink. Fish entwined down the length of his arms, red and blue scales vivid even in the blacklight, a woman whose lower half transitioned into the tail end of a serpent contorted through various other tattoos on his chest. On his back was the mask of a grinning demon, vicious black strokes of hiragana, flowers dripping from twisted branches that began above his shoulder blades. One wrist rested flat above his head on the pole, and when he shifted his weight the edges of a tattooed severed head with a sword through the roof of its mouth was visible on his side.

Next to Viktor, Christophe Giacometti snorted and tapped something out on his phone. “Slut,” he said derisively in Russian, and Viktor sneered.

“Me?” he drawled in the same tongue, though he did not break gazes with the Japanese dancer. “Hypocrite.”

Chris hummed an amused note. “At least _I_ \--” His gaze flickered up from his phone to the dancer, then back down to the glowing screen. His tone became wry. “--do not immediately attach myself to the most poisonous thing in the room.”

“I thought _I_ was the most poisonous thing in the room,” Viktor said petulantly, at the same time that the dancer said, “I’m sure I’m not the _most_ poisonous thing here.”

His Russian was impeccable. His accent was even prettier in Viktor's native tongue. Viktor’s eyebrows shot upward, and he felt an embarrassed flush color his cheeks. Always a fan of schadenfreude, Chris laughed. He removed a cigarette from the inner lining of his coat and pressed it between his lips.

“I’m taking a break,” the Swiss man announced. “Will be back in--” He met Viktor’s eyes, and his held a particularly humorous light. “Fifteen minutes. Don’t do anything I wouldn't do.”

Viktor crossed his legs at the knee and rescued Chris’ half-full wineglass from his empty place. He drank it in its entirety. “And what,” he drawled, “wouldn't you do, Giacometti?”

“Fair point.” Chris’s fingers caught Viktor’s cheek and tipped his gaze in the direction in which he was leaving. Chris loved for people to watch him go. He thought it made him hopelessly desirable, and there were occasions when Viktor couldn't necessarily argue.

_Slut_. He couldn't exactly argue with that either.

He set his jaw and returned his attention to the dancer. Dark hair had plastered itself to his temples, and his face shone with perspiration in the neon light. His face was rounder than one would expect, but he had undeniably nice cheekbones.

“You speak very good Russian.”

He smiled. Wrapped an arm around the pole. “Thank you,” he said. “I know.”

Viktor raised his eyebrows. Set down Chris’ wineglass. “What else can you do?”

The dancer said, “What else would you _like_ me to do?”

Behind Viktor, the door opened. Shut. Someone made a soft disdainful sound at the man sweating out six years of an addiction in a conference hall bathroom.

Viktor Nikiforov snapped, “Get _out_.”

“Well.” Christophe Giacometti did not get out. Instead, he risked all ten fingers by touching Viktor’s shoulder lightly. “You know, I often wonder where that reputation of you being so charming comes from.”

“People who have never met me,” Viktor said tightly, playing along. He appreciated the opportunity to reclaim control. Chris knew him well, and even if he was angry with Viktor (which he undoubtedly was), Viktor’s well-being always came first. Then came the yelling. “They confuse me with you.”

“Flattering,” Chris remarked. “To you.”

Viktor tipped his head back and barked a laugh. “Are you here to lecture, or yell? Because I can tell you neither will go over very well. For either of us.”

Chris tapped his fingers on the marble countertop. His reflection in the mirror seemed starkly real and human next to the apparition that was Viktor Nikiforov. Viktor found himself wondering when he had become so pallid. It was not a promising look for someone dangerously on the brink of thirty. “God, I need a cigarette.”

“You said--” Breath hitched in his throat. “You quit.”

“I say lots of things, Viktor Nikiforov,” Chris drawled. “You know that I’m a liar.”

“Me too.”

“Ah.” Chris searched his jacket pockets for a pack of cigarette and came up empty handed. Last week, high on ecstasy and wholly convinced he was going to remake himself into a respectable fiancé, he had tossed his last pack out the Camaro window. Viktor did not remind him of this. He was sure Chris regretted it enough without further humiliation. “But you're a bad liar. I am not.”

Viktor reconsidered his stance on not humiliating his best friend. “You threw your last cigarettes out of my car window last week. The fiancé doesn't like your smoking.”

“How could I forget.”

Viktor supplied another unwanted answer. “You were very high.”

“These are rhetorical questions, Viktor.”

Viktor said, “You never answered mine.”

Christophe Giacometti looked at Viktor’s reflection in the mirror for a very long time. Viktor did not appreciate the scrutiny, but he allowed it. Chris’ mouth twisted.

“I came here with the intention of kicking your useless ass, yes, if that's what you mean.” Viktor’s grip on the counter tightened again. “But you're looking too pathetic for me to even feel good about it.”

“It’s _amazing_ how you think you can get away with talking to me like this,” he growled. “Consistently.”

Chris tipped his chin upwards. Viktor was reminded violently of Katsuki Yuuri and his challenges and stifled his shudder. “You have yet to punish me for it,” Chris said. Viktor remembered that this was true, and nodded. Reluctantly.

“And I suppose I’m in no position to start now,” he murmured. Chris inspected his cuticles.

“Well, therein lies your problem.”

“ _Lectures_ ,” Viktor reminded him violently. Chris was unimpressed by the sudden anger, and he demonstrated this by striking the counter with an open hand.

“God _damn_ you, Nikiforov!” he snapped. “Grow a spine! Do your motherfucking job!”

“I’m here, am I not?” Viktor demanded. Chris snorted.

“Hardly. How exactly do you expect to become a real force in this city again if you can't even sit through a meeting with _Beskudnikov_ without losing your damn mind?”

“I didn't--”

“Spare me, Viktor.” Chris gave him a contemptuous look. “You’ll never be anything in Petersburg again if you let Katsuki do this to you. _Jesus_. I understood when you thought he was dead, decided that it would be reasonable to allow you to mourn. But what are you mourning now? He’s alive. He’s here. If that upsets you so, then kill him and move on. Stop wallowing.”

Viktor reacted before contemplating the consequences of his actions. It was a rare occasion that he raised a hand against Chris; Viktor was often not the best fighter in the room anymore, and Chris was _Chris_. He’d known him since he was sixteen, and there had always lay an unspoken rule between the two that, regardless of how they treated others, the relationship between them was sacred.

Viktor blasphemed this sacredness by closing his hand around Christophe Giacometti’s throat and slamming him roughly against the convex corner of the wall that bordered the counter. His best friend gasped as surprise stole the air from his lungs and briefly his eyes fluttered white from the pain. His hands flew to his throat to pry off the pressure on his trachea, but by that time Viktor had already released him. Taken a step back.

He was trembling. Like he had after his first murder. And he’d hardly touched him. “I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry, I didn't think--”

Chris bent over the sink and closed his eyes. His breath was ragged, but that was more a testament to the surprise than any real damage on Viktor’s behalf. Quietly, he said, “Fuck you too, Nikiforov.”

“I'm sorry--I wasn't thinking--”

“That's nothing new, is it?” Chris said acidly. As Viktor spluttered, he scowled. “Stop apologizing.”

“Chris--”

“Really. Don’t. Nobody apologizes here, Viktor. You know that.”

Viktor Nikiforov nodded. Breathed. Tipped his head back and studied the ceiling. The crown molding blurred in his vision. “Yeah.”

He felt Chris’ eyes on his face and purposely did not look down. Heard Chris search for something in his coat and shake a metal tin experimentally. He held whatever the thing was out to Viktor, and finally, he removed his gaze from the ceiling.

Broken white pills in a metal tin. Viktor sneered. “Funny.”

“I’m not laughing.” Chris leaned against the counter. “And you're not leaving until you have whatever this is--” He gestured vaguely at the majority of Nikiforov’s person. “--under control.”

“I don't--”

“And I don't care. The only other option is me driving you to Nevsky and dumping you in a fucking canal, and Yakov would have my _ass_ for that, so.” He shook the pillbox. “Spare me the newfound piety for once. Please.”

Viktor did not break gazes with Chris, but he accepted the box. His pulse was wild in his throat as he placed a broken segment of the Xanax on his tongue.

In his breast pocket, Chris’ phone began to ring. He answered in Russian. “Yes?” Then he switched to French. Viktor caught slippery segments of words and phrases, but his French was poor and Katsuki’s old drug of choice was quickly robbing him of all analytical thinking.

“I told you not to call me when--” Several words spoken too quickly for Viktor to grasp them. “Yes. Yes. I know.” Viktor watched his own pupils dilate in the mirror. “No. Geneva. I--” More complicated French. Viktor stopped caring.

Several minutes passed in this way. Sometimes Chris gestured irritably at Viktor, as if there was camaraderie shared between the two, though Nikiforov could understand none of the argument. For the most part, he spoke as if he was alone. His voice softened at the goodbye, and he shoved his phone back into his jacket with a sigh.

“Fiancé?” Viktor’s words came easier now. His breathing was even. He remembered now the case he had always made for prescription abuse. It felt fucking good.

“Yes.” Chris studied his own hands. “I believe we’re fighting.”

Viktor snorted. “Will I ever get to meet him?”

“No.” The reply was too sharp. Viktor flinched, and Chris floundered for a qualifier that would make him sound kinder. He settled on humor. “He would either be terrified or infatuated, and I dislike both outcomes.”

But Viktor understood. Private lives were separate from business. That was how sensible, rational people operated. Chris had lived too long with evidence of Viktor’s folly to make the same mistakes as he. Viktor would not begrudge him this decision. He would simply envy him for it.

“Are you rational now?” Chris demanded, suddenly brusque. He stepped away quickly, as if to put distance between Viktor Nikiforov and Chris’ secrets.

Viktor nodded. “Yeah,” he said, the confession heavy on his tongue. The world was wonderfully simple when drugs were involved. Well, woefully complicated when one was in the business of trafficking them, but incredibly simple when one was abusing their benefits for the sake of some euphoric amnesia. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dumb ass deciding to write a fic where the majority of the action is dependent on exposition-heavy flashbacks, even though I hate writing flashback scenes...I'll take self-loathing for 500 please.
> 
> I realized after posting the previous chapter that I never mentioned in the notes the bits about capital punishment in Russia and Japan so just to clarify: the death penalty is still legal (and utilized, like in cases of multiple murders) in Japan, and the method used is still hanging. The practice is technically still legal in Russia too, but a moratorium has been imposed and no one has been sentenced to death in a while in Russia. 
> 
> I've also made the conscious decision to write another multichapter yoi fic after I finish this one (rip), and the next one will be happy and have characters who are decent people and I promise I'll give them a narrative they actually deserve. (But first I've gotta finish this fic.)
> 
> As always, thanks for reading! Feel free to drop a kudos or comment if you'd like!
> 
> xx


	6. Lacrimosa

Yuri Plisetsky had been eleven years old when he had developed his first childhood crush on Katsuki Yuuri, and he still could not forgive himself for it.

“ _No_ , I hate him because he's a sociopathic asshole and he’s turned Viktor into a complete fucking moron,” he snapped, but Otabek was still looking at him dubiously and Yuri loathed it. He attempted to flip him onto his back, but Otabek Altin was much too big for such things, and he had to settle for sweeping his legs out from beneath him. The move did not have the same vindicating effect.

After a moment to bask sullenly in his victory, he offered a hand to his sparring partner and helped him to his feet. Yuri turned away and retied his hair up to avoid looking at him.

“I’m bored,” he complained. “Don't wanna do this anymore.”

Otabek, he of the unshakable sense of duty and an even greater fear of his superiors, hesitated. “It’s only been thirty minutes.”

Yuri knew he was under private orders to keep him in the house, and he resented this too. This was not even his home. Viktor could not keep him here. Especially not with Katsuki wandering the same grounds and leaving no uncertainty about what his intentions for Viktor were.

Yuri thought about his blood on the mats, his empty corpse’s expression, the way he had kissed Viktor’s hand and then thrown him to his knees so effortlessly the night before. He was terrified of Katsuki Yuuri now, and he could not forgive himself for this either.

“I really don't care about what orders he’s given you,” Yuri said, going for dangerous nonchalance and hardly even achieving the barest self control. “I’m leaving this fucking house, and if you're not coming with, then that's _your_ problem.”

Otabek looked at him in that way he did when Yuri was being particularly difficult, but he said nothing. Yuri Plisetsky found this unwillingness to take orders like he should infuriating. What good was a best friend if he didn’t back up one's every questionable decision with unwavering support anyway?

“Yes?” he snapped, wanting him to say no, to tell him that Viktor Nikiforov’s orders overrode any irresponsible whim of Yuri Plisetsky’s to melt the tires off the Mitsu racing other silver spoon rich kids through Petersburg alleyways. He wanted him to say it because he knew he never would.

Otabek Altin never outright told him no. This, at least, was a quality in a best friend that one could consider useful. Yuri Plisetsky had not had any other friends with which to compare, but he reckoned Otabek was a pretty decent second in command.

Diplomatically, Otabek said, “It’s pretty early to go racing, don't you think?”

“No.” Regardless, the hour was irrelevant. Yuri was going stir crazy in Viktor Nikiforov’s giant mausoleum. He could not exist in the same house as Katsuki Yuuri for another moment without doing something he would ultimately regret. “Let’s go.”

Yuri Plisetsky was a spoiled brat, and Otabek Altin was paid well to keep him out of particularly self-destructive pastimes. Thus, they spent the majority of their free time wrecking luxury sports cars in lieu of the infamous things Viktor got up to when he was sixteen. Yuri thought this was rather responsible of him.

He allowed Otabek to take the lead because doing so was easier than pretending he was capable of outstriding him, but he did not allow him the ownership of the Mitsubishi keys. Those were Yuri’s alone.

Nikiforov’s garage was a graveyard of the oldest, fastest, and most expensive vehicles in the world. The place could have been a national wonder for the existence of Viktor's 1969 ZL1 Camaro alone. Arguably the fastest classic Camaro ever made, there were less than seventy ever manufactured. And Viktor Nikiforov owned one, with the factory paint still intact. He had purchased it and had it shipped to Saint Petersburg from Detroit for purely vain aesthetic reasons and had thus never bothered to unlock its true potential--and he never left Yuri alone with it lest he attempt to do so either.

With the exception of the Camaro, at whose altar Yuri would gladly worship for the rest of his life if it meant a mere hour behind the wheel, Yuri did not care for American cars. Katsuki loved Fiskers because they were electric and being environmentally conscious apparently made him feel better about being a homicidal dick, and a younger Yuri had been briefly (and embarrassingly) infatuated with them too. But that love affair was long dead.

“Ugly ass piece of shit,” he said with some manner of affection, kicking the door of the outdated silver model with his boot. Behind him, Otabek snorted.

“Don’t invite more trouble onto yourself with that,” he warned, and Yuri rolled his eyes.

“It’s only true.” And if he couldn't openly hate Katsuki Yuuri, the very least he could do was take it out in his hideous car. “I would never insult a car that didn't deserve it.”

“Of course.” Otabek’s tone was wry. “I would expect nothing less.”

Perhaps the Mitsubishi Evo was an ugly ass piece of shit too--or so Viktor had told him--but it was Yuri’s ugly ass piece of shit. Obnoxiously scarlet, with a yawning black mouth and neon backlit dash and mere centimeters’ space between the body and the pavement, it was a rich brat’s car if Yuri had ever seen one. It was also his favorite thing in Saint Petersburg, and he tolerated Viktor Nikiforov largely because he paid the car’s modification expenses.

Turning the key in the ignition immediately spat on the radio, which was playing awful Russian rap at an unbearable volume. Instinctively, Otabek Altin slammed the off button, but when Yuri raised his eyebrows, he turned the radio back on. More quietly. With reluctance.

“Where exactly are we going?” Otabek asked, casting an anxious glance in the rearview. Yuri had no idea how long Viktor’s conference would take, but he had certainly been gone for a long time. He could return at any moment, and Yuri couldn't imagine Otabek was very anxious to be caught _en flagrante delicto_ allowing Yuri to leave the house.

“Petrograd side,” Yuri replied. For his part, Yuri didn't care whether they were caught.

This was fortunate, because he had hardly backed out of the space when the Camaro came blazing into view and idled directly in the Mitsu’s way. The driver’s door slammed. In the Evo’s passenger seat, Altin visibly tensed. Yuri rolled down the window and turned up the radio in greeting.

“Where the _fuck_ do you think you’re going?”

“Why do you care?”

Viktor Nikiforov was gloriously angry. Yuri relished it. “I _care_ because you are under orders not to leave the house while I’m gone, and you _know_ this, and you think you’d have fucking _learned_ \--”

“Are you high?” Yuri demanded suddenly, and this gave Viktor pause.

“No,” he said stiffly, but his eyes betrayed him. His expression was willfully, incorruptibly earnest like Yuri had rarely seen it of late. “I am not.”

“You are.” Yuri's own voice became viciously disdainful. “You have no right to lecture _me_ \--”

“I am an adult,” Viktor said, as if that would finalize the argument. He always said it like it would. “I can make my own decisions. You are sixteen and clearly incapable of doing the same. You are staying home.”

“ _This_ isn't my home.”

“Spare me the melodrama, Yuri Plisetsky.” But Viktor dragged a hand down his face. Exhausted. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Whatever.” He took his foot off the brake, and the Evo rolled dangerously backwards. The ZL1 still sat idling behind it, clearly visible in the rearview. “Move your car, or I’m going to hit it.”

“No.” Viktor knew him well, and he knew he would not hit the Camaro, out of fear of Nikiforov as well as respect for the automobile. Predictably, Yuri placed his foot back on the brake.

“Go fuck yourself, Viktor,” he spat instead. “I’m not sleeping in the same house as Katsuki. You’re a moron for thinking that's not a sure fucking way to get murdered.”

Viktor said, “Don't speak to me like--”

“I will speak to you however I like!” Yuri snapped. He turned off the radio violently, and the sudden absence of background noise made the exchange seem even more volatile. “You can _appoint_ yourself to any position you like, Viktor, but until you start acting like someone I can respect, I will not fucking respect you.”

Unable to find an equally venomous reply, Viktor’s gaze flashed accusingly to Otabek. As if this was his fault. This was no one’s fault but Viktor’s. And Yuri’s, if he was inclined to confess blame when he was wrong, which he was not.

“Your ex-boyfriend’s being a creep, and I’m not sitting around waiting for him to get up the nerve to kill me. You can babysit him. But I’m leaving.”

“Did he talk to you?” Viktor asked, suddenly. “Because I told him--”

“And I’m sure he’s keeping your orders very close to his heart, Viktor,” Yuri said scathingly. “No, he didn't talk to me. He did bleed all over the gym though, and _that_ was disturbing as fuck--”

“He _what?”_

Yuri was no informant. He gave Viktor a scornful glance and flicked on and off his brights. “I'm leaving. Move your car or I will total it.” The Evo was newer and less fragile than the fifty-year-old Camaro, and Yuri would do some divine damage reversing into its side panel at top speed. Anger had given him the nerve to do so. Viktor knew it, and he dragged his hand down his face and waved dismissively at the Mitsubishi. Conceding.

Viktor Nikiforov was giving up. He gave up so easily now, there was hardly any excitement in disobeying him. Yuri wondered in a brief flash of self-awareness if he was making Viktor’s life harder than it had to be. If Yuri was partially at fault for him becoming a pale version of the glorious monster he had been. Then he decidedly pointedly not to care.

Yuri did not hate Viktor. Sure, there was a difference of thirteen years between them and Viktor had always been the favorite when it came to his grandfather despite not even being of the same flesh and blood and perhaps Yuri would always resent Viktor for being present when he died and not doing _fuckall_ about it, but he did not hate him. He hoped Viktor knew it, because Yuri did not know how to say it.

Viktor shared one last promising look with Otabek Altin and stepped back from the Evo. His next words were dangerously soft.

“Be careful, Yuri Plisetsky.”

Yuri snorted. “Right. Like you.” Yuri was achingly sheltered compared to the Viktor of stories. He maintained that this was not a testament to his being _lesser_ in anyway; rather it was largely because drugs were not nearly as fun when one did them alone, and Otabek Altin didn’t so much as drink anything of the fermented variety. Religious reasons. As Yuri’s only friend, he possessed the rare honor of having Yuri respect his wishes in this area without complaint.

If Viktor caught the irony, he made no comment on it. He surrendered and removed the Camaro from the Mitsubishi’s path. Yuri Plisetsky expressed his gratitude with an obscene gesture out the Evo’s window as the car shrieked out of the garage.

“He’s going to kill me,” Otabek remarked stoically, seeming characteristically resigned to the fact. Yuri shrugged.

“Not if Katsuki kills him first.”

“I don't think that's anything to joke about,” Altin said sharply, and Yuri laughed. He was driving much too fast for the avenues of Nevsky. He was untouchable.

The speedometer rocketed as the Evo took a turn, and Otabek lurched violently to the side. His head slammed against the window, and he cast Yuri a disapproving glare. The dash read one-hundred-thirty kilometers per hour.

Yuri barked a laugh again, and then he said somberly, “I’m not joking.”

* * *

 

“Well.” Mila had cast off her red-bottomed heels and was walking in her stockings beside him. They had agreed (Mila had demanded, and Viktor had been too high to protest) that she would stay the night until they resolved the Katsuki situation, for Viktor's own safety. Mila's words, not his own. “You never fail to disappoint, do you?”

Viktor let the barb slide. Being so uncaring was becoming steadily more difficult as the drugs lost their potency, but he was still doing a valiant job. “Fifty percent of my charm,” he said.

“Where is the other fifty percent, I wonder?” Mila remarked, voice dry as a desert. Viktor did not look at her. Then she said, “I’ve been thinking of going to Rome.”

Viktor blinked. “You’re joking.” But she was not. It was obvious she was not. “You will do no such thing.”

Mila rolled her eyes. “Some people learn from experience, Nikiforov. I won't make your mistakes.”

“I didn't say anything about you _making my mistakes_ ,” Viktor snapped. “Though I doubt you're intelligent enough to avoid that Crispino bitch eating you alive--”

“Mm, that would be nice,” Mila sighed, to see his jaw set and the anger flash in his eyes, surely.

“You will stay here. That's an order.”

Mila looked at him lazily. She was not afraid of him. Viktor had a sudden memory of himself, twenty years old and facing off Nikolai Plisetsky in a similar manner. _You can't stop me. I will do as I like._ He had not been incorrect, then. He feared that the message in Mila’s glare was not incorrect now.

He opted for a different approach.

“Mila,” Viktor confessed. “Georgi is leaving for a job in Madrid in a week. Chris will be in Geneva for two full weeks next month. With Beskudnikov, and the ketamine, and--and--” He tried to say _Katsuki_ but candor failed him. “I can't do it with the three of you absent and fucking around in the south. I need you here.”

Mila hummed. She was a snake like Katsuki Yuuri was a snake. Viktor found them to be terrifyingly similar. “If you’ll miss me, that's all you need to say, babe.”

Viktor cute her a dark, silencing glare. It absolved little. Mila merely laughed. She was silent in her stockings. Viktor’s footsteps made noise, but Mila was a phantom.

“I wonder when you're going to tell little Yura exactly how you _appointed_ yourself to this position,” she sang. Ice flooded Viktor’s veins.

“I don’t care for what you're suggesting, Babicheva,” he said coolly. Vaguely, he wondered if the truth would matter to anyone but Yuri Plisetsky. Chris had been there. Yakov had been an orchestrator. No one else had cared very much for Nikolai Plisetsky in his later years.

Viktor certainly hadn't.

“Parricide is such an ugly word,” Mila murmured, and though they were alone the statement was as bloody as if Viktor himself had confessed it. “And you’re so _pretty_. I wonder if Yura would believe it.”

Viktor wondered where Mila had grasped these rumors. Popovich? It was unlikely, but so was the fact that she had heard of them to begin with. She was so young, and it had been so long ago.

“What is this, Mila?” he demanded. “Blackmail? Because if so, you'll be disappointed to hear that no one will care. More people will thank me than hate me for it.” And it was true. One could generate some sympathy for the devil, but Nikolai Plisetsky had been in another league entirely. He had built an empire on his own cruelty, and Viktor had inherited it through his.

Mila Babicheva smiled. “It's not blackmail, Viktor.” She swung her heels cheerfully in time with his footsteps. “I’m just reminding you who you are.”

Viktor hadn't forgotten who he was, but Mila had a particular talent for making him face it. He felt himself sway, and paused to stabilize himself. Mila did not immediately stop at his side, but continued until she was a few strides ahead of him. Power plays. She looked back, and her expression was smugly knowing.

She hadn't spoken anything but the truth, and Viktor resented her for it. Because, rationalized like that, he saw how it easy it was. A boy who had killed his father figure without any apparent remorse years ago could make easy work of a past lover as an adult. Surely Katsuki’s assassination was nothing compared to the trouble killing Nikolai Plisetsky had been, and he was much, much more of a threat.

A memory: red seeping between his fingers, bullet punctures in papery skin. Death throes. The way Viktor’s hand had involuntarily closed around his own throat in revulsion, the smear of brown blood he had left on his neck. The pitch to Yakov Feltsman’s voice when he said, “ _Excellent_ work, Vitya.”

He had been twenty-one. Pampered rich boys like Viktor Nikiforov were not forged so easily into weapons as the likes of Katsuki Yuuri. It had been his first murder.

_Parricide_. He’d killed often since then. Done much worse things than kill. What was a little mariticide to top it all off?

Surely Katsuki deserved it.

“It’s different now,” he protested numbly, but he saw that it was not. Killing Nikolai Plisetsky had been difficult not because Viktor had not wanted it, but because he doubted his ability to carry out the act. It was the same, undeniably, with Yuuri. Viktor wanted nothing more than to be rid of him, and the looming threat to his empire, and the insistent guilt that pervaded every corner of his conscience now. It was simple truth that Viktor Nikiforov wanted Katsuki Yuuri dead.

Whether he could perform the execution himself was the question.

“I imagine,” Mila said, “that killing your father opens up a lot of opportunities that would’ve previously been unavailable. You know--morally.”

Viktor said automatically, “He was not my father.” Not when he had died. Not for a long time before that, either. Viktor had been an instrument, not a son. Nikolai Plisetsky had been an evil man, not a father.

In the present, Mila Babicheva looked triumphantly at him. “Is Katsuki Yuuri your lover?” she demanded, like it was an answer.

“No.” And then it was an answer. Viktor closed his eyes. Braced himself with one hand against the wall. “Okay. I--I understand. Okay.”

Because, suddenly, the necessary course of action was earth-shatteringly obvious. He would kill Katsuki Yuuri. Really, there was no other option. It was either mariticide or self-immolation, and Viktor was not the suicidal one.

And in all honesty, it would not be that difficult. He slept in this house, to which Viktor possessed all the keys. He had nowhere to go, and the world already believed him dead. Three years had taught Viktor all Yuuri’s secrets, all his virtues and all his vices and the way he used them in a fight. An assassination of one he knew so well would be as quick and simple as the stroke of a knife.

Unless, of course, Viktor decided to make it painful. Perhaps he would make of Katsuki an example to those who doubted him, turn him into the sacrificial offering that would grant Viktor back his infamy.

Maybe, Viktor thought, it would even be fun.

Mila Babicheva smiled. “I love when you use your brain,” she condescended. “You should do it more often.”

Viktor dismissed her with a sharp twist of his head. She slunk away without any real shame, having said her piece and subsequently gotten her way. Viktor doubted that she had ever been concerned of not achieving such a thing. Mila always got her way eventually.

Yes, he decided. Mila Babicheva was very like the Viktor Nikiforov of old. And he would be that Viktor again, he vowed, once he got Katsuki Yuuri out of the way.

Then--and only then--would he deal with the problem of young and beautiful upstart Mila Babicheva. There was room for one ruler on the board, and Nikiforov was going to ensure that it would be him.

* * *

 

Making Viktor Nikiforov his was surprisingly easy. Yuuri hadn't anticipated him being so willingly led. _And_ he was sinfully rich. Yuuri simply wouldn't know what to do with all that money. Perhaps he would throw it all away on foreign strippers too.

Beneath him, Viktor Nikiforov’s breath hitched in his chest. Yuuri had his legs wrapped around his waist--which was no small feat with Nikiforov sitting as he was--and he had just driven his hips into Nikiforov’s. The man’s expression was carefully controlled, but there appeared to be a great deal of strain in maintaining it.

Neutrally, Nikiforov reached into his suit jacket and pressed a ten thousand yen note into Yuuri’s palm. Just as calmly, Yuuri opened his fingers and let the note flutter to the ground. Nikiforov’s other hand gripped the arm of the chair painfully tightly. Yuuri was feeling bold, and so he pried his fingers away from the chair and pressed Nikiforov’s palm to his chest.

“Is this your first time in Tokyo?” he asked conversationally, and Nikiforov’s laugh had an edge of disbelief to it.

“Yes,” he confessed, and Yuuri capitalized on this moment of vulnerability by rolling his hips again. Unguarded, Nikiforov gasped. He pressed another yen note into Yuuri’s fingers and did not withdraw his other hand from its place over Yuuri’s heart.

“And how do you like it?” Yuuri murmured, and he felt Nikiforov pause in distracted confusion. Laughed. “Tokyo, I mean.”

“Oh.” His blue eyes were glassy. He was perhaps more naive than Yuuri had originally thought. Evidently less experienced in this line of work than Katsuki Yuuri was. Because this was so _easy_ , Yuuri was barely trying. He’d worked harder for less money countless times before. “It’s--it’s fine. A bit...fluorescent for my tastes.”

“Fluorescent.” Yuuri tested the word in his mouth and found it pleasing. So did Nikiforov. “I like fluorescent things.” Nikiforov became bolder, his hand creeping down his chest, and Yuuri removed it swiftly. The man’s gaze flickered to his in needy protest. “Don't care for Russia, though.”

“No?” Viktor Nikiforov stared at his own hand like it did not belong to him. Yuuri’s fingers were still tight around his, to keep him from stealing more than he was paying for. “And--and why is that?”

Yuuri couldn't grasp the word in Russian, nor English. He said it in Japanese, and it melted onto his tongue. “ _Austere_. Yes, that's the word.” He pressed the back of Nikiforov’s hand to his lips. “You’re all like your cities. Cold, prudish.” He laughed. There was nothing prudish about Viktor Nikiforov at the moment. Kissing his hand had pushed him to the edge. Pupils swallowed up his irises, and his lips parted, just barely.

“I wonder if it requires a masochist to survive a place like that,” Yuuri continued. His voice dipped to just above a whisper. “Would you know?”

Viktor Nikiforov knew nothing. Such was evident in the blind want in his expression, the vulnerable line to his mouth, the helpless way his eyes followed Yuuri’s lips. Yuuri doubted he had even registered the question.

This was so _easy_. Yuko could have never done this job. Clearly, she had nothing to offer the likes of Nikiforov. And _god_ , he was pretty, wasn't he?

Outside of the money, Yuuri rarely derived any of his own pleasure from these exploits. But he would not mind continuing this game with Nikiforov. He found himself wanting it, tasted the question before it passed his lips.

_Do you want to go someplace else?_

“Yuuri.” Yuko rematerialized to save him from making an ass of himself. Her voice was sharp. “Minako wants them now.” Her gaze flickered, artfully disdainful, between dazed Viktor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri perched in his lap. “Alive.”

Yuuri laughed. “Of course.” His hand slipped into Nikiforov’s jacket as he extricated himself from his lap and his legs. His heart was wild again Yuuri’s palm for the briefest moment, and Yuuri felt a pull in the pit of his stomach as he dragged his fingers along Nikiforov’s throat. This was agonizing.

In full view of Nikiforov and Yuko and as many nameless Plisetsky subordinates as one could be bothered to count, Yuuri entered his own phone number in the device’s contacts. He tossed it carelessly back at Viktor Nikiforov, and he caught it.

Finishing touches.

Yuuri laughed. Nikiforov looked stunned. Yuko wrenched him to her side.

“What the fuck do you think you're doing?” she murmured. “ _Plisetskys_.” She said the name like a curse.

“I _know_ what I'm doing,” Yuuri said stiffly. “Saving your ass.”

Yuko blinked at him, and he recognized the horror in her eyes which he had previously mistaken for disdain. He had terrified her, playing with fire. Her hands shook as she shoved a bundle of cloth into his arms.

“Go change.” Ragged breath. “I’ll do this. Meet us in Minako's office.”

“Me?” Yuuri looked at her in confusion. “Why--”

Yuko looked irrevocably exhausted. She sighed. “Just go, Yuuri. I’ll handle this.”

Yuuri went. When he returned to the main floor, fully dressed now in a not-inexpensive suit, the Plisetskys were gone, Yuko with them. The ten thousand yen banknote Yuuri had cast aside while on Nikiforov’s lap remained. Silently, he bent to recover it and tuck it neatly into his pocket. Petty cash, it would serve more as a reminder than anything.

_Be careful._ He hadn’t been. He had been drunk with the illusion of power, had taunted Nikiforov with his sense of false security, and he hoped it would not come back to ruin him. He hoped Minako would not see it fit to punish him for it. Especially not in front of the Plisetskys.

Okukawa Minako liked to make examples of Yuuri. It had something to do with him not following her orders as blindly as he had before.

Her office was a museum of grisly things, and the usual inventory did not even take into account the number of Plisetskys it now contained. A taxidermist had butchered a snow leopard for Minako’s benefit, and its head was mounted above the door. Black ink propaganda dating back to the Meiji restoration covered the adjacent wall. Yuuri had loved those works, as a child. The text was poignant in its simplicity, as all great propaganda was: _revere the emperor_.

Perhaps more incongruent with Minako’s career choice was the collection of illustrated handscrolls on the opposite wall--samurai relics Yuuri now recognized as simple posturing for foreigners. Any Japanese guests would know that the yakuza had never been allies of the _bushi_ and their many claims that they were descendants of old warriors were historical revisionism, at best. Pathetic apologism for actions which did not warrant apologies, at worst.

Yuuri did not care for that part of Minako’s collection.

He did not announce his presence, and Minako did not acknowledge it. He simply slipped through the Russian ranks and made his way to his usual position behind her chair, where he stood at attention and looked above the heads of every one of Minako’s five guests. Nikiforov’s blonde companion bent his head to confide something undeniably smug in Nikiforov’s ear. Yuuri did not spare them a glance.

Yuko was not present. Yuuri realized this was why the room felt unbalanced, why he felt so on edge. He and Minako were outnumbered two to five, and she had not let Yuko stay.

Perhaps, Yuko had not wanted to stay. That, in itself, made sense. Minako allowing her such cowardice did not. Regardless, Yuuri was grateful on Yuko’s behalf. Still, his nerves electrified at the thought of having to back Minako alone. Having to die for her, if need be.

He hoped it would not come to that.

“Enjoy yourself?” Minako asked lowly, in Japanese. She sounded smug. Yuuri did not look at her.

“I enjoyed the money,” Yuuri lied. He kept his voice and his face blank. But Minako had taught him his lies, and Minako could read through them.

“Oh, so you _did_ enjoy it,” she crowed, as Yuuri made the mistake of letting his eyes wander, his lip curl. He met Viktor Nikiforov’s gaze for a fraction of an eternity. Nikiforov’s expression was neutral.

Yuuri affixed to his mouth a cruel smile. It was what Minako wanted. “I did.”

He was sure Nikiforov could not understand Japanese. But his eyes narrowed as if he could.

_Oh_ , he was devastatingly pretty.

Yuuri slammed the blank mask back over his face; his mouth thinned into a line, his gaze returned obediently to the dead snow leopard above the door. _Don’t_. Nikiforov still haunted his peripheral, and he thought he saw him blink in surprise. Yuuri did not care. Minako would.

“That’s interesting,” she murmured, and before Yuuri could wonder what she was thinking, she stood. Abruptly. Yuuri did not move, but her sudden proximity made him uncomfortable. The snow leopard’s glass eyes stared through the plexiglass behind him, surveying the club below with a fixed snarl.

Minako spread her arms. “Welcome,” she said in English. She was as tall as Yuuri, but even if she had been small she would have been suffocating. Something about Minako expanded to fill all possible space in the room, choked those who could not stand their ground against her. She was terrible, and admirably so.

Abhorrence of a power imbalance made Viktor Nikiforov stand, politeness made him bow. “Thank you,” he said humbly. Yuuri was impressed at his awareness. Minako was volatile when one did not follow her rules, and her rules were ever changing. He did not let his admiration show on his face. “And thank you for the invitation.”

“Of course.” Okukawa Minako surveyed Nikiforov with an eye trained for secrets. “You’re younger than I imagined.”

He smiled a half-smile intended to be utterly charming. Minako was not charmed. Katsuki Yuuri kept his eyes on the dead animal above their heads. “So are you.”

A mistake. Yuuri couldn’t help his smile. Nikiforov’s gaze flickered to him, and he must have calculated the error, because his eyes widened fractionally.

“Spare me flattery,” Minako spat, and her palm came down hard on the desk surface. Yuuri watched one of the younger men start, and he raised his eyebrows mockingly. “Talk business and only business, or Katsuki will escort you out.”

_Ruthless_. It was often said of the Okukawa brood, just as _ruinous_ was commonly assigned to the Plisetskys. Yuuri always enjoyed the realization on their faces when they saw the stories were true.

But Nikiforov did not cower. Rather, he reacted well to the unexpected. His expression was suddenly razor sharp, and when he placed his hands on Minako's desk-- _too close too close_ \--it was with the grace of a predator. Minako, for her part, was too pleased to cut off his fingers.

Yuuri was too impressed to do it for her.

“Fine,” Nikiforov said, and his voice was low and thick with accented consonants. “Let's talk business, Okukawa Minako.”

Minako straightened her spine, rocked back on her heels. Both she and Yuuri were shorter than Nikiforov, even with him leaning over the desk as he was now. Yuuri did not like it--his proximity nor his height. Calmly, he removed a switchblade from his pocket (Yuko always had the foresight to arm his outfit changes), opened it, and drove it into the red sandalwood surface. Very close to Nikiforov’s fingers.

He met the other man’s gaze coolly. “Hands off.”

Viktor Nikiforov did as instructed. Behind him, the tallest of the Plisetskys already had a handgun trained on Yuuri’s head. “ _Hey_ , asshole,” he sang. His English was smooth, natural. A first language. “Watch where you keep the sharp things, or I’ll put a bullet in your fucking head.”

Yuuri snarled. Viktor Nikiforov raised a hand to alleviate the tension. “No need, Leroy.” He looked very curiously at Katsuki Yuuri. “It was my mistake. I overstepped.”

Reluctantly, Leroy holstered the gun. Yuuri closed the switchblade. Minako smiled, and somehow it made her look crueller.

“Katsuki Yuuri,” she introduced him finally, nodding at her companion. Yuuri’s gaze had slid upward and beyond the foreground again. He would not look at Viktor Nikiforov. “I understand you’ve met.”

Nikiforov smiled, and it did not make him look crueller. He looked--not unkind. “Briefly.”

Minako laughed, and Yuuri fiddled purposefully with the switchblade in his fingers. He did not put it away, lest he need to use it again. “Katsuki Yuuri is my second in command on drug matters. His orders are mine, and his counsel is taken into account in my business. Do you understand?”

Nikiforov did not confirm nor deny his understanding. He was looking at Yuuri thoughtfully. “Second in command,” he repeated softly, and Yuuri sneered. He couldn't help it. He was humiliated.

He demanded, “Is there some reason for doubt?” The challenge was dripping with disdain. “Do I not meet your _expectations?_ ”

Viktor Nikiforov blinked at him. “Oh, no,” he said evenly, “you've met them.”

Yuuri promised himself he would not blush. The switchblade opened itself suddenly in his hands.

Nikiforov’s gaze shifted to it momentarily, then slid back to Okukawa Minako. “I did not realize you consulted club dancers on matters of international drug trade,” he said casually. Yuuri registered that he was becoming enraged, and was wont to do something he would regret.

“Minako,” he said, then switched to Japanese. “I would like to request to leave.”

Minako looked to Yuuri coolly. “No.”

“I would suggest--”

“I said _no!_ ” There was danger in the words, understood in any language. Yuuri’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. Once.

“Understood.”

Nikiforov tilted his head and regarded him inquisitively. Yuuri lifted his chin and did his best to look bored. He failed.

“To answer your question, Mister Nikiforov--” Minako leaned over the desk, rubbed a thumb over the considerable new nick in the sandalwood with an air of displeasure. “All my men and women are trained from a young age to be capable of anything. All receive dance lessons, combat training--” Yuuri knew it was coming by the hitch in her breathing, and so he did not flinch when she disarmed him of the switchblade, and dodged the weapon effortlessly when she turned it on him. Minako was still smiling sweetly at Viktor Nikiforov, but had Yuuri moved more slowly, she would have taken out his eye. Swiftly, he twisted her arm until she released the knife, and caught it as it dropped from her fingers.

He disliked this. He was a shiny expensive thing to Okukawa Minako, a toy to show off to new acquaintances to impress them. One of the many relics in her sadistic museum of self-congratulatory rewritten history.

Yuuri was not a _thing_. He did appreciate being a cheap party trick for a gang of Russians. But he did not dare communicate this either.

He wondered how and where the stuffed snow leopard had died.

“--and all manner of etiquettes for as many social situations as you could invent. That includes club entertainment, as well as ballet, language instruction, drug trafficking experience. Whatever else you could think of--Katsuki Yuuri and his classmates have learned it.” She shrugged, but the tilt of her chin was proud. “There is a reason that my assassins are the best in the business, Viktor Nikiforov.”

“And are they all so...stoic?” Viktor Nikiforov’s voice was unkind now. Yuuri hated himself for seeing altruism where there could surely be none. “It appears to me that you've raised soldiers, Minako, not criminals.”

“Is there a difference?” Minako drawled, and Yuuri simmered. He would not stand much longer for being discussed like a mildly interesting collector's item. But discipline kept him silent. “Perhaps the Plisetskys could learn from my methods. Whatever happened to those delicious rumors of infighting anyway?”

Nikiforov’s eyes narrowed. Minako was referring to the era prior to Nikiforov’s leadership, surely, when the criminal underground was rife with tales of Nikolai Plisetsky losing his grip on his dynasty. Rumors that his own men were clamoring for his blood and his money and his power. Then he had died, and Nikiforov had succeeded him, and the rumors had curiously fallen out of circulation.

Nikiforov waved a dismissive hand. “Rumors. Fomented by jealousy.” His faux humility was infuriating. “Such things occur when one leads the most successful crime family in the world, you understand.”

Minako’s lip curled. Yuuri could not decide whose games he resented more. Regardless, he was bored of both of them.

“Business,” he said brusquely, and he was not surprised when both looked to him as if they had forgotten he was there. Katsuki Yuuri was used to being invisible, and he was used to being an excuse for posturing too. He allowed the blank mask to settle back in place. Second nature. “Is that not what we are here to do?”

Nikiforov looked briefly chastised. Minako looked displeased.

“Business,” she repeated nevertheless, and they went about it. She sat at her desk. Yuuri remained standing. So did Nikiforov. Behind him, Yuuri surveyed each of the other Plisetskys. The Swiss one, second in command and rumored lover. The English-speaking one, loud and brash. Another lackey, this one dark-haired and pale, elegant like a fragile painting. A silent, sullen old man who did not match the dangerous youth of the rest of them. Katsuki Yuuri wondered what made the four of them so special.

He wondered, and then he made himself stop wondering, because good subordinates did not wonder and good heirs did not covet the families of others. He held his breath until he went dizzy, and then he was Minako’s again. As he should be.

Beside Yuuri, Minako inclined her head in a mocking imitation of deference. Yuuri saw suddenly that Viktor Nikiforov was too young, too inexperienced in Okukawa Minako’s shadow. This was real power before him.

Okukawa Minako said, “Offer me your soul, Viktor Nikiforov, and I will tell you the weight of it in cocaine.”

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov pondered how he would kill Katsuki Yuuri. He had decided it would be a public affair. Such things had to be publicized, to achieve the intended effect--Viktor’s intention being a coup d'etat of his own business, in full daylight.

But he had not yet decided what _public_ meant. If the second assassination of Katsuki Yuuri was a Plisetsky matter alone, or if it was better to let the world know where Viktor Nikiforov stood on the rumors of his incoming retirement.

Viktor preferred originality, but throwing those who displeased him from the balcony at an opera was still a stunning statement of dismissal. Perhaps he would plagiarize such a method. Change it, to fit Viktor’s preferences. It would be a ballet instead. _Le Corsaire_ , or perhaps Tchaikovsky. One could not go wrong with Tchaikovsky.

But then again, no. It was too simple. Too merciful, and cowardly if he allowed himself to admit it. If he was going to kill Katsuki Yuuri, he would not repeat his old mistakes. He would do it himself, to the death blow, and he would leave nothing to chance.

He made himself a drink and wandered upstairs. Throughout the morning he had crept around his own house, loath to encounter the man that had once been his lover and was now his enemy, doing his best to avoid another disaster of a confrontation. But now Viktor was making a point to not be afraid, to not let Katsuki’s haunting turn his home into a crypt. This was Viktor’s. All of it. It would remain so.

He considered again methods of assassination. There was a certain appeal to poison. Wronged lovers poisoned their partners with an admirable frequency in lore. And there was pleasure in the thought of Katsuki on his knees, choking to death on blood and bile and pretty blue cyanide. How gloriously undignified.

But Katsuki had once informed Viktor disdainfully that poison was the practice of cowards, and Minako did not teach poisoning to her students because of the dishonor of it. Viktor did not want to kill Katsuki Yuuri with a coward’s trademark. He had spent too long tearing himself apart over the cowardice of shooting Katsuki and leaving him for dead, for the police to fret about, to attempt something similar again.

So poison was out too. Viktor Nikiforov scowled. Absently, he flicked through messages on his phone. His man in Japan had sent him photos within the week that could be useful. Viktor pulled them up for study.

Katsuki Mari, thirty-three and looking slightly more haggard than usual, a cigarette pressed between her lips. She sat alone in the driver’s seat of a nondescript but expensive automobile that was surely a long-ago gift from her little brother, and her head was rested on the window. She looked like she had been crying.

Katsuki Hiroko, who had most certainly been crying. Viktor had never met Katsuki Yuuri’s mother, but he found it difficult to imagine the monster that was Hiroko’s son ever coming from a woman like her. She was small and round and perpetually smiling--except in this instance, in which her face was tear-stained and lovelier for the fact--but Yuuri had her mouth. Viktor conjured up a mental picture of Yuuri’s rare genuine smile, and found he could see the resemblance between mother and son. Faintly, but it was there.

Perhaps he looked more like Toshiya. Viktor scrolled through a number of images--Hiroko in the garden, Mari getting stoned next to the springs, Hiroko with a newspaper and one hand pressed over her mouth in a fruitless attempt to stifle the grief--until he came to rest on a photo of Katsuki Yuuri’s father. And still, there was nothing of Yuuri in Toshiya’s face. Viktor had never honestly entertained the ways that cruelty could shape an appearance, but he considered now the possibility that Katsuki’s parents were simply too kind to look like him.

Viktor growled in frustration. This was fruitless. He wouldn't succeed in anything but more thoughts of Katsuki Yuuri perseverating over the matter like this. And pondering it was making him lose his nerve.

Instead he saved the photos to his phone and sent them all in one large message to Katsuki Yuuri’s new number. Whether his motivation was malice or something else did not matter, because Katsuki would surely interpret it as a threat.

And interpret it so he did. Viktor’s phone buzzed immediately with texts, many of them artistic variations on the words _fuck you_ and a string of Japanese which presumably outlined ways in which Katsuki would kill Viktor if he touched his family. The same things he’d been saying for two days now, which had already ceased to faze or impress Nikiforov.

Suddenly Nikiforov was bored. Of Katsuki’s attitude, of this limited vocabulary they seemed to share now, of having Katsuki Yuuri within reach and not being able to do the numerous things which he wanted to do to him.

He sent Giacometti a terse message informing him that Viktor would be answering no calls for the night, and then for the first time since that embarrassing era of mourning after Katsuki Yuuri’s arrest, Viktor Nikiforov set about getting very, very high.

* * *

 

“Six hundred billion yen,” Yuuri said. “Down payment.”

There was silence. Even Minako looked at him with gentle, barely concealed surprise. _Six hundred billion yen._

The Swiss man laughed, and the sound broke the silence but not the discomfort stagnant in the air. “No,” he said simply, and Yuuri narrowed his eyes.

“Why not?” he challenged. “We need assurance that you are trustworthy. I’ve heard the stories like everyone else, and I will not make deals with devils without cash insurance that you won’t back out. It’s six hundred or nothing.”

“Then,” the blonde man settled back into his seat, the picture of collected calm. “We will take our business elsewhere. Mexico, perhaps.”

Yuuri scoffed. “ _Right_. And you're going to trust some Robin Hood narcos to give you the deal we offer? And uphold it?”

Discomfort solidified into something else. Malice. Nikiforov tilted his head curiously, and his very presence was razor sharp. He regarded Yuuri quietly and said, “And how do we know we can trust you? I’ve heard stories of the Okukawas too. Though--” He appraised Katsuki Yuuri casually. “I can't say I’ve heard much of you. _Yuuri_.”

Involuntarily, Yuuri’s spine straightened. His fingers curled into a well-formed fist. He smiled. “It’s Katsuki, actually. Please don’t be presumptuous, Nikiforov. A paid lap dance does not award you my given name.”

Minako’s fingers on his wrist were a terse warning. Reluctantly, Yuuri heeded it. He spread his hands. Tried for civility again.

He said, “You want the Okukawa name, you want zero grade coke, you pay the Okukawa price. If you’re happy to buy, sell, and ingest Mexican product cut with ninety-five percent benzocaine, you're welcome to do so.” Katsuki Yuuri was an expert on cocaine. He let his distaste at the thought of cutting _anything_ with benzocaine--as was custom in the Americas--bleed into his voice. “If not, it will cost you six hundred billion. No less.”

“Who says _I’m_ going to be ingesting that shit?” sneered the loud one. Leroy. “I wouldn't trust anything you gave me for _free_.”

Yuuri smirked, utterly charmed at their ineptitude. This was his element. Drugs, bravado, with Okukawa Minako at his side. The Plisetskys could not possibly hope to negotiate their way out of this one. “Well, of course not,” he said indulgently. “I wouldn't even give you flour for free, Leroy.”

Nikiforov snorted. Yuuri's eyes flickered to him in bare surprise.

_Have I met your expectations?_

Because he realized bitterly now that he was not showing off for Minako’s benefit. This performance, this secondary show, was for Nikiforov alone.

Yuuri wondered when he had become such a slut.

Viktor Nikiforov looked at him evenly, and his appearance--all wide blue eyes and easy-set mouth and ridiculous silver hair--was at odds with his expression. Viktor Nikiforov looked like a pretty flake at best and a gorgeous moron at worst, but Yuuri recognized a mask when he saw one. Like attracted like, after all.

“Six hundred billion yen,” Nikiforov said slowly, and then he turned to the Swiss one. “What is that, in euros? What would that be from the accounts?”

Second in command and lover Christophe Giacometti’s response was admirably automatic. “Little less than five billion. In euros.”

Nikiforov contemplated this. Finally, he said, “That’s not that much. For a partnership.”

_A partnership?_ Yuuri looked suddenly to Minako, puzzled, but she was nodding along. Agreement. She intended for this to be a long-term alliance? A semi-union of the two businesses? Surely she wouldn’t be so foolish as to tie her reputation to some infamous Russian assholes over a few hundred kilos of cocaine.

“Minako--” Yuuri began, but he faltered when Minako waved his protest away.

“Six hundred up front, down payment,” she repeated. “In exchange for five years of a tentative alliance. To be terminated at my discretion, should you fail to meet my expectations.”

Viktor Nikiforov nodded pensively, then said, “And what are your expectations?”

Yuuri was still watching Minako’s face, and his trepidation increased with her smile. He did not like Minako when she smiled. It was always dishonest, but that was not the problem--the problem was that usually it heralded trouble for Yuuri and Yuko.

“My expectations are that you treat Katsuki Yuuri with respect in Saint Petersburg, and if there is any abuse of my trust, Katsuki is awarded the power to deal out the appropriate punishments in my stead.”

Yuuri’s response was vicious. “Absolutely _fucking_ not.” He did not realize it was in English until Nikiforov made a light sound of amusement, and he looked to him violently. “I will _not_ \--”

“You will. And you will not question it.” Minako’s tone was dangerous. Nikiforov's was pleased.

“You offer us your second in command? As insurance against yourself?” He laughed. Yuuri had not realized how colorless he was until now. Like some dangerous creature not made for sunlight. His eyes were the only thing about him that was not pale. “That is very generous, Okukawa Minako.”

Yuuri snapped, “I am not a _thing_ to be _auctioned_ off, Minako, and I will not--”

He heard the slap before he felt the sting, and instinct made him snarl, raise his own hand for retaliation. Realization that it was Minako who had struck him made him bow his head.

“I apologize.” In Japanese. The deference killed him, but the embarrassment at having been cowed in front of guests made the floor open up beneath him and swallow him whole. “I forgot myself.”

“You did.” She had stood, but she did not look at him to speak. “Ensure it does not happen again, Katsuki Yuuri. Remember that you asked for this.”

“I didn't ask for--” Yuuri began, and then bit his tongue. He nodded. He understood now, Minako’s games. She knew Yuuri would not have stood for being sent away to placate Russians whom Minako had stiffed in an unfair coke deal, but she knew he would stand even less for Yuko to face the same. Yuko was as much insurance against Yuuri as Yuuri was against Minako.

He hated this. He hated them all: Minako, Nikiforov, himself and his damned pride and his damned altruism for getting himself into this situation. He realized that negotiations were continuing, but he could not bring himself to take part in them. Yuuri stopped listening, focusing on the weight of the switchblade in his pocket and the gun at his hip and the shift of his jaw as he ground his teeth. Damn them all to hell.

Yuuri was no _gift_ , no _insurance_ , and both Minako and Nikiforov would regret their considering him so. He would ensure it.

“Yuuri.” Minako’s cool fingers on his wrist held a different meaning now. Her touch was light, gentle, and though her face betrayed nothing he understood what the gesture meant.

_I am sorry_. Yuuri didn't want her apology. Tersely, he removed his wrist from her yielding grip and set his jaw. Minako interpreted the action correctly, and nodded. Regally, she ordered, “Katsuki, see them out,” and she gambled nothing more for his forgiveness. When Yuuri looked at her, her expression was carefully blank.

So was his.

He strode purposely for the door, casting it open with more force than was strictly necessary, and when he turned to look at them all he did not meet Viktor Nikiforov’s eyes. His own gaze slid above his head casually, like Yuuri simply could not be bothered to look at him.

This was not the case.

The case was that Viktor Nikiforov was devastatingly pretty and looking at him was making Yuuri stupid and Yuuri did not want to be stupid he wanted to be _angry_ because anger was self-control and self-control was the only thing keeping Katsuki Yuuri upright and not on his knees before Okukawa Minako’s desk begging her to let him _stay_ he would do _anything_ to stay in Japan _please_ \--

He ground his molars to the nerve and said with expert detachment, “I will show you out. This way.”

The pace he set was brisk enough to keep a good few meters’ distance between him and Nikiforov, but no distance was far enough to dull the ache in his chest. Was this what eight years of loyalty warranted him? A quiet banishment to Russia, bound in service to another too-young mafia boss whom Yuuri could easily crush if he so desired? More orders and more _yes sirs_ and no Minako to keep him in line and no Yuko to keep him sane? Was this punishment for his post-Michigan attitude? Or did Minako think she was _helping_ him, presenting him his big break in the form of fifty kilos of pure cocaine and the dangerous electricity that thrummed beneath twenty-three-year-old Viktor Nikiforov’s skin? Yuuri did not want it.

“I imagined her differently.” Yuuri’s eyes rolled to the ceiling, involuntarily. “Less, I believe.”

“She’s more than you could ever imagine,” he said, and the amusement in Nikiforov’s tone made him shiver.

“Is she? And what, exactly, is the nature of your relationship with her?” _Vile._ It was easier for Yuuri to hate him now, thus easier to suffocate the fear and want of him.

“Is that what you think?” Yuuri spat, and he did not turn but he laughed coldly. “Is that what you do in Russia? Fuck your way through legions of old women for your power?”

“I’m sure some do.” Nikiforov’s shrug was easily communicated. “I prefer other methods.”

Yuuri smiled bitterly. “I’m sure you do.” He let the suggestion of the statement linger, made no effort to dispel the heavy discomfort in the air. His lungs hurt. Subtly, he searched his pockets before remembering that Yuko had given him this change of clothes mere hours before, and there would be no relief for him tucked into the folds. Briefly, Yuuri closed his eyes. Reopened them.

The club floor was still thrumming with bodies and Yuuri could not fathom surviving that sea in the state of mind he was currently entertaining, and so he led the Plisetskys around the main hall and threw open a secondary exit to the Kabukicho street. Leaned against the door with a falsely casual air and dipped his head mockingly. Gestured impatiently for Nikiforov to leave his domain before Katsuki Yuuri lost it and had a full anxiety attack right here in the street.

Viktor Nikiforov stepped into the street, but he did not leave. Instead he turned, and he watched Katsuki Yuuri for too, too long. Yuuri did not fidget, though wanted to. He lifted his chin upward in challenge.

“I will see you tomorrow, Katsuki Yuuri.” The rest of the Plisetskys filed out, coagulated behind him. Viktor Nikiforov smiled. “I look forward to our partnership.”

Yuuri’s heart leapt from his ribcage. Panic and anger and something else made him revert back to old customs. He curled his lip and said in English, “Blow me, Nikiforov.”

Viktor Nikiforov smiled. There was no anger to it, but something more dangerous. Hunger. “Hmm,” he murmured, his eyes sweeping over Yuuri’s person and coming back to rest on his face, unmoved. “You'll have to impress me first.”

Yuuri sneered and let the door swing itself heavily closed. He made a point to look away from Nikiforov first, making his back the last thing he saw.

Then his legs gave way beneath him and he was on his knees and he gasped and shook and _felt_ like he had not allowed himself to do in a long time. He thought, foolishly, that he had gotten past this, the tremors and the panic and the unseating _wrongness_ that ate away at him every move he made. He thought he’d become better than what he had been.

He had not.

Yuko found him twenty minutes later, disappointingly human, legs pulled up to his chest and his back against the wall, still in his suit but looking nothing like a budding young drug lord should look. Yuuri had the energy to tilt his head back and look at her blearily, and that was all.

Yuko said, “Yuuri, I’m sorry,” and Yuuri said, “Yes.”

She offered him a hand and he gripped her forearm to pull himself up. The sudden change in position made him dizzy. He felt empty, but not in the usual way. Like an essential part of himself was missing, yes, but also like he was thoroughly fucking exhausted.

He did not realize Yuko had her arms around him until he felt her next words in his shoulder. His hands spasmed like he wanted to reciprocate the contact, but he didn't know how anymore. He blinked.

“If I had known--Yuuri, if I had known, you _know_ I wouldn't have asked you to--I would never ask you to do something like that, and I will fix it, I promise, I’ll talk to Minako and I’ll fix this and it will be fine--”

“Yuko.” Finally, finally, his hands found a reasonable place on her back, and he felt no better but at least he would not look like an asshole, and he took a shuddery breath which Yuko could surely feel through his suitcoat, and he found words. “Yuko, it's already fine. I’m fine.”

“You're not,” Yuko said, because he could not lie to her. “Don't play the hero, Yuuri. This is my mess I’ve gotten you into, and I’ll fix it.”

Yuuri gave a hollow laugh. “It's not your mess, Yuko. This was never about you. Minako’s playing games.”

“Well then I’ll make her _stop_ them, Yuuri, I promise you I’ll--”

Yuuri realized at the same time as Yuko did that he was crying, when tears wet her bare shoulder and she pulled away and looked at him in surprise. Amazing, how the body could still function by the book when something inside his brain was undeniably wrong.

Yuuri said, “It’s fine. I just don't want to leave again,” and it was almost a passable falsehood. Yuko’s expression was pitying. Yuuri did not want to be pitied. He pulled away.

Yuko’s lips thinned. Yuuri recognized this as her stubborn face, and he closed his eyes. He did not want to fight either. He wanted to lie down, and maybe to die. A little bit.

“Katsuki Yuuri, has it ever occurred to you that maybe you aren't meant for this?” Yuko demanded. “That maybe...you could be better than us?”

“No.” Yuuri took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling. Then he met Yuko’s eyes, and he knew his mask had reaffixed itself by the injured twist to her mouth. Good. “No, it hasn't.”

And then he left her alone in the hallway, and he did not see her again until he left for Saint Petersburg forty-eight hours later.

* * *

 

Their opponent was a shiny chrome Benz which Yuri wanted to see wrap itself around a streetlight with a vicious type of desire. He would be the reason for it.

Otabek Altin leaned over the shift and murmured something Yuri thought was perhaps a warning. There was certainly caution in his tone, and Yuri immediately stopped listening after that. He did not like when Otabek assumed this role, the stoic bodyguard whose job it was to keep his headstrong criminal charge in line, and he usually ignored him when his voice took on that affectation.

The situation had begun like this: they were in Petrograd side, and the scarlet Mitsu and its illegal tint and the godawful bass thumping from the windows had drawn attention. Which was Yuri’s goal, after all, but this attention was police attention and thus not his ideal type of audience, and he had pushed the Evo to its limits snapping around corners and sliding into neighboring lanes to get the fucking cops off his trail, and then the fucking Mercedes had come out of nowhere in an intersection and crushed the Evo’s passenger door in on itself, and Yuri Plisetsky had become very angry very fast. Rolled Otabek’s window down and slammed off the music and shouted a ferocious _“Chertovski suka!”_ at the driver who had just ruined a two hundred and seven _thousand_ ruble paint job and several more hundred thousand rubles of bodywork, and then wrenched the gearshift into reverse and back into drive again and scraped a retaliating chunk of metal out of the flank of the Mercedes.

And then he had taken off, and the Mercedes had pursued him because that was what Yuri had wanted and he _always_ got what he wanted, and here they were. Idling at a light, the air conditioning off and the interior quickly filling with heat, the Evo’s engine snarling under the hood, waiting for the driver of the Benz to get up the nerve to take Yuri Plisetsky, infamous spawn of this damned city, up on the challenge. Which he would, because that was what Yuri wanted. And because one simply couldn't stand for a sixteen-year-old punk--famous mobster’s younger brother or not--carving a chunk out of a Mercedes Benz side door without making some kind of stand, obviously.

Because Yuri knew cars, but he also knew the people who drove them. Benz drivers were douchebags upstaged only by Mitsubishi drivers, or perhaps Camaros, and even the realization that one was quite literally racing death in the form of a Plisetsky on the streets of Saint Petersburg would not stop a scorned Benz asshole from rising to the occasion.

The Mercedes snarled in response, the mechanic growl rising in harmony with the Evo’s noise, and Yuri watched the traffic light waver on green for a millisecond. The gas pedal met the floor, the clutch the only thing between the Evo and crossing the starting line.

And then the light changed.

The Mitsu leapt across the line, the sudden forward motion tearing a curse from Otabek’s mouth, and Yuri laughed. Shifted gears. The Benz shrieked beside them--Yuri must had dislodged something mechanic in the underbelly when he hit it the first time, and it was now dragging and spitting sparks up from the concrete--but it was beginning to creep ahead.

Which would not do.

Yuri Plisetsky tore into another gear and the Mitsubishi snarled and jumped ahead and when he yanked the steering wheel to the right the back end of the Evo caught the front headlight of the Benz and metal crumpled and _god_ this was what it felt like to be alive--

“Watch yourself!” Otabek Altin snapped, and Yuri was about to sneer but he realized that they were quickly gaining on another intersection and Petrograd side was unusually busy tonight wasn't it and beside them the Benz has ducked out, was decelerating but the Mitsu didn't listen to _slow_ as well as it heeded _fast_ and--

Yuri yanked the steering again and the car spun sideways and it was a good thing Altin was wearing the seat restraint because he snapped forward and would have put his head through the windshield had the strap not caught him against the chest and god they were going to flip once twice three times but they _didn't_ they didn't because the Evo lurched into a one-eighty turn and blew past the Benz fast enough that Yuri could hardly get the window down in time to shout “Mother _fucker!_ ” before they were gone.

Alive. _Alive_.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Otabek Altin said, no longer stoic though he was trying valiantly for adult disapproval. Something like euphoria was alive in his expression. “Do you have a _fucking_ death wish?”

“Not that I know of,” Yuri gasped, and then he flung his head back and swore violently for several seconds. Then he laughed. Turned onto a side street that was not a one-way, because he was fairly certain he did not have a death wish actually, and said, “Jesus Christ.”

Otabek Altin did not disagree, though he was looking at Yuri with a curious tilt to his head and an uncomfortable look on his face. Yuri decided it had less to do with their near-death experience and more with some personal emotional damage on Altin’s part since, customarily, he was not particularly eager to assign the blame to himself. He realized self-consciously that his cheeks were flushed and Otabek had reassumed the superior expression that seemed to Yuri hell-bent on reminding him that Altin was older and more level-headed and therefore _better_ , and Yuri combatted this by scowling.

“What?” he snapped, and Otabek’s eyes narrowed and his face slid into the sharp professionalism which Yuri so hated. He liked Otabek rebellious or sullen or with that wild light in his eyes which he had just had after the run-in with the Mercedes, but he did not like him like this. It was too pointed a reminder that this friendship with Yuri was an _assignment_ to him, that even if it lasted and became something genuine, the living Plisetskys did not have good track records of fraternizing with their subordinates. Nor, for that matter, did the dead ones.

“Fuck you too then, Beka,” he said, and Otabek sighed. He looked tired.

“Let me drive, please.”

Yuri scoffed. “No.” Useless request. Altin knew better than to ask to drive the Evo nowadays, even though by all legal accounts he was the only one of the pair who _could_ drive it, and his asking was obviously nothing but that sense of obligation to Viktor, back with a vengeance again. Yuri scowled.

“Please,” Otabek entreated, and the bowing to a higher power was nice. Yuri’s pride still would not allow it.

“Can you even drive stick shift?” he demanded petulantly, and he hated how childish it sounded. He hated how there was no fight left in him anymore. Let Altin be Viktor’s bitch if he wanted to be. Yuri would have no part in it.

He shoved open the door and strode purposefully around the front end, and it took more concentrated effort to get open the smashed passenger side door but he did that too, and then he gestured impatiently for Otabek to get out. Which he did.

“I don't care what Viktor threatens you with, Beka,” he snarled from the passenger seat. “You will not control me.”

From behind the wheel, Otabek Altin looked apologetic, but also very in control. He said, “I have no intention of ever trying, Yura,” but to Yuri it sounded like a lie.

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov woke and discovered that his hands were slick with blood. His gaze immediately jumped to the razor he had used to cut the ketamine into lines, lying innocently beside him, and then back to his hands.

No. They were not quite _slick_ with it, really, not anymore. They were sticky. Brown blood flaking in the creases of his palms. He checks his wrists, the backs of his hands, his forearms, but there were no open wounds.

His face was numb, and his thoughts were dulled from the drug but he was not quite stupid enough to overlook this fact. His fingers prodded his face clumsily, but he discovered the source of the blood. Viktor laughed softly, and pins and needles rippled across his facial nerves. Blood again began to drip from his nose, and fastidiously he checked his shirt collar and found it stiff with the drying contents of his arteries. Brilliant.

He was a moron. He was going to be sick. And he could not remember the events of the night.

_Ketamine_ , of all things. Viktor did not trust himself sober anymore, but somehow he had thought it a good idea to insufflate anesthesia on a night such as this. With Katsuki so close and with Viktor under new resolve to kill him and Chris under strict orders not to bother him under any circumstances, Viktor had drugged himself out of his senses without so much as arming himself ahead of time.

_God_ , he was stupid. But he was stupidly alive.

A memory, a hallucination, the events of the last twelve hours. Hands on his face, hands running down his spine. _Oh, Viktor. You won't remember this._

Viktor shuddered.

Had he not learned? Was he incapable of moving forward in anything, of taking his fuckups to heart and not to his damned bed? The short answer was no.

The long answer was the evidence of his binge spread on the desk before him, the blood on his collar and the fact that he had passed out face first into the remnants of seven lines of K like a fucking university student. The long answer was a memory of Katsuki Yuuri fully clothed in a bathtub of scalding water, Viktor high as a damned kite himself and pleading with any deities who might listen to _please please don't let it be this way please_. The long answer was also no.

Viktor tried to stand and caught himself on the edge of the desk as his legs gave out beneath him. Made his way along the walls to his bed, onto which he collapsed unceremoniously. He realized belatedly that he was still wearing his shoes, and exerted some fruitless effort to kick them off. Light was showing through the crevice in the blackout curtains, and the reminder of his folly made Viktor scowl. The scowl made him numbed face twitch.

Twelve hours, at least. An entire evening, the night which followed, and the next morning, lost. All because Viktor was intent on substituting one addiction for another now. All because he had forgotten how to handle mortality and the supposed miracle of consciousness like other human beings did, and now craved synthetic replacements for dreams and pleasure and forgetting.

Viktor was no stranger to drugs, but his recent reacquaintance with them made him feel like he was. He hadn't done more than the occasional ecstasy with Giacometti since Barcelona, and here he was snorting K in his bedroom like a fucking addict. Viktor had forgotten the way it would make him feel afterwards, after the binge and on the heels of the crash. Like death. He wondered, if this was just the crash, what an overdose felt like. He supposed he could always just ask Katsuki Yuuri.

_“Is this your first time with K?”_ Amusement bleeding into his words.

Viktor wanted to lie, wanted to say _no of course not_ but he couldn't make his brain lie when he was like this. He couldn't make his brain do _anything_ like this. Objects at the edges of his vision has started to watercolor into each other, his eyelids were impossibly heavy, Katsuki Yuuri was even more beautiful above him and Viktor wanted to kiss him but he couldn't because he couldn't make his body listen to what he wanted.

So he simply closed his eyes, tipped his chin, and nodded. Always happy to be of service, Katsuki Yuuri kissed him, gently and then deliciously not. He tasted like gin, which he had been drinking, and copper.

Twenty-two-year-old Katsuki Yuuri liked drugs of a depressant nature. Viktor preferred stimulants. This had been an experiment, the ketamine, and Viktor was not entirely sure he liked it quite yet.

“If this is your first time, you're not going to remember it. You did--” Yuuri’s words dissolved into an impressed sort of laugh. “Quite a lot. I’m inspired.”

Viktor tried to roll his eyes. Failed. His heart was disturbingly calm in his chest. Dimly, he wondered if the K was going to kill him. He wondered if he would mind, like this.

It took extreme effort for him to speak, but he managed. He was grateful for Katsuki’s fluency in Russian now more than ever, because English was an unattainable concept like this. Even Russian was very nearly impossible at the moment.

“Then,” he murmured, and he knocked Yuuri’s arm out from underneath him and Yuuri fell gracelessly onto him on the sofa and laughed in mild pleasant surprise and Viktor decided yes he did like the ketamine because everything was so _pretty_ and slow and wonderful on it, especially Katsuki Yuuri, and he didn't want to forget this feeling ever in his life. “Make it memorable, Katsuki.”

Yuuri unbuttoned Viktor’s collar just far enough that he could fit his hands into his shirt and smirked. His own pupils were huge with the coke high he was currently nursing, and Viktor thought he had never been more entrancing.

_I’ll do my best._

In the present, Viktor couldn't decide if this was a distant memory or a machination of his recent drug binge, but he didn't care. If he couldn't be free of Katsuki Yuuri even heavily anesthetized like he was, when could he be fucking rid of him? He would certainly have to kill him. Nikiforov could take no more of this. He had enough blood on his hands without adding his own to the mix. He would not hide in his own city, his own home, for Katsuki Yuuri’s benefit. He would not wait around for Katsuki--real or the one that haunted Viktor’s head--to murder him first. And he wouldn't do his ex-boyfriend’s drugs either.

_Make it memorable._ Viktor grimaced.

He certainly would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Le Corsaire is a ballet based on a poem by Lord Byron, and also the source of Nathan Chen's music selection for his short program last season. If you've never watched Chen skate I would sincerely recommend it, because he regularly ruins my life (especially when he mentions in interviews that he might try for seven quads during Olympic season).
> 
> Robin Hood narcos is a term for the type of drug cartels who survive on public favor to avoid arrest, and often "steal from the rich and give to the poor." A popular example of this type of drug lord would be Joaquín Guzmán, better known as El Chapo.
> 
> Finally, the relationship between the samurai and the yakuza and their respective origins are shady. Modern yakuza like to claim that they are somehow descended from the samurai after being a samurai became near illegal during the Meiji restoration, and it's speculated that some samurai did join the gangs after being outlawed, but the two groups were very at odds in ideals in the beginning. (The Meiji restoration banned samurai from carrying swords, abolished the feudal system, etc, and is largely credited for the "westernization" of 19th century Japan.) All of this is useless information but I do too much pointless research and find it interesting, so cheers. 
> 
> Chapter count is still hesitant. I'm experimenting with different outlines, and will keep yall updated. As always, thanks for reading and feel free to drop a comment or kudos if you see fit! 
> 
> xx


	7. Loyalty

_new phone. don't text the old one._

It had been a week since Katsuki Yuuri’s resurrection. An uneventful week. Yuuri wondered when he would get up the nerve to stop sulking in his new bedroom and actually _do_ something. Viktor certainly appeared to be keeping himself busy. The most Yuuri had done was creep into the library and sequester a stack of novels off to his room at three in the morning on a Monday.

_cool cool can i ask why the fuck u bought a new phone_

Phichit Chulanont had become a constant in Yuuri’s uncertain new life, like the nervous gnawing in his stomach and the looming threat of Viktor Nikiforov and the unsatisfied desire for revenge that steadily grew with each day. Yuuri appreciated his presence, almost. It was nearly easy to convince himself that Chulanont was a new ally--though it smacked of deadly complacency to think so--when Yuuri was so surrounded by old allies who now wanted him dead.

_nikiforov got to the old one. don't really feel like dying because you sent me a picture of your breakfast again._

Phichit Chulanont was an enigma too. Not necessarily because he had revealed himself to be surprisingly clever or because Yuuri sometimes entertained the possibility that one day he and Chulanont could be more than this tentatively allied cat and mouse--though both points were admittedly true--but because he was not scared of Yuuri anymore, had hardly ever been scared of him at all. He was very damn near friendly, and Yuuri almost found it charming.

_it was a good breakfast. what did he do to the old one? gotta tell Fuchū something and they're not gonna b happy to hear u killed ur phone_

And then it was times like this when Yuuri remembered that Phichit Chulanont was a cop and Yuuri was an international criminal and sentimentality really did not suit him at all.

He scowled.

_not sure and not risking it. u can tell Fuchū exactly that. i don't care if they're happy about it or not._

He flung _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ against the wall with his good hand. The ancient spine snapped when it tumbled to the ground, and Yuuri hoped it was a first edition. He’d read it once before, in a compulsory freshman lit class in Michigan, and liked it, but he couldn't stomach it a second time through. Perhaps it hit too close to home now. Perhaps Yuuri was sick of having his own bloody fate foretold in the literature Viktor favored.

_fine. could do without the attitude._

_and i could do without a babysitting. unfortunately we’ll both have to live with it._

He stopped texting Chulanont after that. Deleted the conversation. Picked up the mirrored pieces of the Wilde and dropped them on the dining table on his way out to lunch.

Yuuri did not eat in the house anymore. Viktor had stopped asking for updates on his whereabouts, and had simply assigned him a rotating guard to scrutinize his movements out in Nevsky at all times. Depending on his companion for the day, Yuuri could find it bearable. He didn't mind Leo or Guang Hong, despite their ages and seeming inability to converse about anything but the other, and he didn't really mind JJ, as long as he kept his distance and his volume at a previously agreed-upon level. Mila Babicheva was not an option, and neither was Giacometti. Lee was the safest bet, really, and usually Yuuri appreciated his unerring silence but it had begun to needle him lately.

“You can talk to me, you know. I’m sure that's not considered traitorous.”

Seung-gil looked at him blankly. “And what would I talk about?” he asked. Yuuri scowled.

“Something. Anything. Express your gratitude for my employing you, perhaps.”

“I am not grateful for it.” No. And why would he be? He was better off in Seoul, working as a young money launderer when Yuuri had met him. The Plisetskys were poisonous, and association with them was nothing to be grateful for.

Perhaps this was the reason he resented Yuuri so. Lee Seung-gil had never struck Yuuri as particularly loyal by nature, and the assumption that his hatred for Katsuki Yuuri was a result of fidelity to Nikiforov had never seemed right.

But such selfish motivation was good, because Yuuri could work with personal vendettas much better than he could dogged blood loyalty.

“At least you’re richer here,” he pointed out casually, and Seung-gil looked at him boredly.

“Are you particularly comforted by all the money you've made in Nikiforov’s service, Katsuki?” The response was so dry it made Yuuri laugh. Seung-gil was young too, but he was clever.

“I preferred not to think of it as service.” He shrugged. “More an internship. Work experience for a résumé, maybe.”

“Work experience that’s got the world believing you're dead and has you forever branded as a traitor to your superiors,” Seung-gil said. “I see.”

“I didn't betray _anyone_ ,” Yuuri snapped suddenly, and Lee raised his eyebrows.

“Maybe not,” he drawled, “but the truth doesn't matter, does it? Painting you as a traitor made it easy for Nikiforov to turn you over, made it easy for he and Feltsman to convince us all that it was for the best, and that's the only truth that matters now.”

Yuuri sat back in his seat. His pulse fluttered in his throat, but he did not feel angry any longer. He smiled. “I like you, Lee.”

“I don't like you, Katsuki.” Something like amusement lit his eyes. “But I dislike Viktor Nikiforov much more.”

And thus came about the first disciple.

After Lee, attempts at recruitment became common practice. The young ones were easiest, mostly because they were still idealistic in their greed and saw Yuuri as an opportunity to elevate themselves before they missed their window. They saw the Katsuki-Nikiforov era as a model for success rather than an outline of Yuuri’s failures, and he was content to let them believe it so long as it made them like him. And it did.

The veterans were harder. Yuuri didn't dare try for Babicheva or Giacometti--he was not so stupid as to attempt to seduce Viktor’s second and third in command--and so he started with Leroy.

“Still got that girlfriend back home?” he asked over dinner, and Jean-Jacques Leroy looked to him in surprise. Perhaps he had not expected Yuuri to speak during the meal, or perhaps he had not expected him to remember the details of his personal life. Or to care about them.

“Yeah,” he said after a beat, nodding slowly and then more enthusiastically. “She’s my fiancé now though.”

“Oh.” Yuuri looked to his hands and noticed the engagement band for the first time. Tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Congratulations, then.”

“Thank you.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Don't know how I’m going to manage a marriage and this though. Especially on different continents.”

Yuuri made himself look apologetic. “I couldn't offer you any useful advice.” Leroy laughed.

“I wouldn't take it if you did,” he said, and the words were bold but damningly friendly. “I don't consider you a model for functional relationships.”

“We all have our vices,” Yuuri agreed.

“Yours just happen to be a bit more bloodthirsty than most,” JJ pointed out. Yuuri shrugged.

“I don't blame him.” He was slipping into that easy university persona which he had thought long dead. Something about JJ Leroy always unerringly brought out the painful college kid dialect in Yuuri. Like reliving fucking trauma. “If I tried to kill him and he showed back up in my house, I’d be pissed too.”

“Well.” JJ hesitated. “I suppose it _is_ justified...”

“Do you remember when we met in Kabukicho?” Yuuri did not want to hear anyone make excuses for Viktor. Even if Yuuri himself had prompted them, for the sake of his own lies. “You threatened to shoot me.”

“I did. You deserved it.”

Yuuri inclined his head. Lowered his lashes. He had forgotten what constituted vulnerability and what was simply seduction nowadays. Vikor had not cared for the distinction, but Leroy would. The latter method would have no effect on him, unfortunately. “Did I deserve it in Barcelona?”

Panic and uncertainty married in JJ’s expression, and Yuuri wondered suddenly if he had pushed it too far. Asked too much of him, too soon. Surely an invitation to betray his boss would not be well-received now. They had just reunited.

_Stupid_. Yuuri was damned stupid.

Jean-Jacques Leroy wavered visibly, but then he murmured, “Personally, I don't think you did. Deserve it.” A beat of silence, and then hurriedly: “But it's not _my_ place to say, and I’m sure Viktor knew what he was doing--back then at least, because I’m not sure that he had any idea nowadays and--”

But Yuuri brushed his protests aside, let his voice soften and his expression melt into something more open. It hurt him to do so, but it was worth Leroy’s loyalty. “You don't have to explain it to me. I understand your obligations.” Kind reassurances. Visibly, Leroy relaxed. Let Yuuri gently lead him into traitorism. “Viktor’s influence is a hard thing to let go of.”

“I don't think he’s _influencing_ me in any way, Katsuki--”

“You don't, because he’s good at it.” Yuuri smiled, and there was something of wistfulness in his voice and his mind and his mouth. “He was always better than me at talking. What’s the phrase? _A silver tongue._ ” He nodded. “That one.”

JJ Leroy looked at him uncertainly. He was not stupid, Leroy, but he didn't always use his head as much as he should. Really, Yuuri thought he should have noticed this spell by now. Should have at least put up a fight against this obvious entreaty for sympathy.

He didn't.

“I mean,” Yuuri laughed. “For god’s sake, he convinced me that my life was worth as little as he thought of it, made me believe I deserved Barcelona because it was good for _him_. Did you know that, JJ? I hardly even _cared_ when he shot me, I was so in love with him.”

And this truth hurt him too. Admitting it aloud was excruciating. He had not blamed Viktor for Barcelona, not at first. Infatuation had convinced him that he must have deserved it in some way, been an unkind lover or a disappointing right hand. He accused himself of being too much, of hurting Viktor in ways he couldn't identify, because he knew he _knew_ he must be at fault for something because the Viktor with whom Yuuri was in love would never do something so selfish. After a while, Yuuri concluded that the case was simply that his life was worth less than Yuri Plisetsky’s, and briefly, that was understandable too.

Falling out of love with Viktor Nikiforov had _hurt_ like Yuuri had never felt before. Because with the disillusionment that Viktor had had no ulterior motive than greed and a fear of Katsuki becoming his _equal_ came the realization that he was a pawn and had always been, that Viktor must have been delighted to conquer an Okukawa so easily, that Yuuri had embarrassed himself and Minako and his entire legacy by being so casually seduced. Falling out of love with Viktor Nikiforov had awakened in Yuuri the truth that _love_ and its accompanying vices would always lead him to self-destruction, and he was better off being angry than feeling anything else.

“It was easy to see,” JJ said quietly. “We all could tell--tell that you were too in love with him for your own good.”

“Well, I’m glad to know the rest of the family watched me embarrass myself in silence,” Yuuri said, too sharply. He reined in the anger. Pitched his voice for coaxing lies again. “But yes, that's what I mean. He’s charming, JJ. There was a time when he’d have been able to talk you off a cliff, and you wouldn't even realize it wasn't in your best interest until you reached the bottom.”

JJ snorted. “Not anymore.” The secondary confession hung unspoken between them. _He’s lost that talent._ And maybe he had, but Yuuri was not going to chance it.

“No.” Yuuri smiled. “No, not anymore.”

* * *

 

Phichit Chulanont was tucked into the corner of a little Russian cafe in Novaya Gollandiya, and he was reading Katsuki Yuuri’s book.

The place was quiet--Novaya Gollandiya was not quite a tourist trap, and Phichit knew he would draw some unwanted attention by appearing as a foreigner in such a sleepy place, but he had convinced himself by now that he did not care. That if he was going to spend a year of his life in this godforsaken freezing city, he was at least going to spend time in the pretty parts. And that Novaya Gollandiya was far enough from Nevsky Prospekt that he could venture from the hotel without reasonable risk of meeting a Plisetsky on the way.

It was around ten o’clock in the morning, and though Phichit was finding the book fittingly gruesome for the likes of Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov, he was enjoying it. Less so was he enjoying the knowledge of the dedication penciled in on one of the beginning pages, which he had deciphered painstakingly on his phone with a Russian keyboard and a shitty edition of Google Translate this morning.

_“...And to his talk to the moon he often adds that of all things in the world, he most hates his immortality and his unheard-of fame.”_

_Because it makes me think of you. It can only truly be read in Russian, but I like the idea of you owning a copy in Japanese too. Think of me in turn when you read it._

_Viktor_

Perhaps it was nosy of Phichit to translate it, and the creeping sense of unsettlement the note gave him was what he deserved. But Katsuki Yuuri must have known Phichit would want to know what it said when he gave him the book, and he had not given him explicit instructions _not_ to read it, after all.

Still. It made Phichit feel filthy, to know the extent of the intimacy between Katsuki and Nikiforov. It was different, he thought, to know what the world knew, to see the photographs and read the articles that explained in self-satisfied, fetishizing detail the physical aspects of their alliance. The world had been obsessed with Viktor Nikiforov’s bed and Katsuki Yuuri’s place in it, once upon a time, and Phichit was not disturbed by knowledge of their sexual exploits anymore. But _this_ \--this proof of emotional attachment and _affection_ and an actual relationship outside the professional and the carnal--this was new, and thus unnerving to him.

He did not like to think of Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov being human. He did not like to think of them as anything but monsters. Phichit Chulanont knew that humans and monsters often bore striking similarities, and that it was easy to confuse one for another, but it was harder to find a comfortable place on the world’s moral spectrum when one thought of it this way.

_Think of me in turn when you read it._ He wondered what kind of person Viktor Nikiforov had been, and if he still resembled that person in any way. He entertained the question that if he had ever loved Katsuki Yuuri, did it make him more devil or human? Did it matter?

Then he kicked himself for thinking it, because it was not Phichit’s job to debate the morality of either monsters nor mobsters, and went back to his book.

* * *

 

“Have you ever been to Saint Petersburg?” Viktor was trying to make conversation, but Katsuki Yuuri was not reciprocating, and thus the exchange was beginning to feel rather one-sided. He lamented this more than he did the fact that, according to Chris, flirting with his newly conscripted Japanese employee was making him look particularly pathetic. “Do you talk? At all?”

“Only when the conversation is interesting,” Katsuki Yuuri said, and it was pointedly in English. Viktor had been speaking Russian, because his English was good but Russian put him in control, and Katsuki Yuuri had apparently decided to reject this strategy. Viktor frowned. He wanted to hear him speak Russian again.

“Who was the woman? Your sister? Girlfriend?” Katsuki did not strike him as the type to have a girlfriend, but perhaps it was a self-loathing-fueled type of arrangement, and that Viktor could understand. Not condone, nor be particularly happy about, but understand.

Katsuki looked at him in the rearview mirror, eyebrows raised, and said, “A friend,” and it was clear that was the end of the conversation. Viktor pushed it anyway.

“You have friends,” he remarked in faux surprise. “Are you always this kind to them?”

“Do you always talk this much to yours?” Katsuki retorted, and from the passenger side Chris snickered.

“I’m afraid he does,” he said, and Viktor shot him a petulant glare which had absolutely zero disciplinary impact. Chris merely smiled.

“Lovely,” Katsuki said. “Let's hope you never consider me among your friends, then.”

“How could I not, when we’re already hitting it off so well?” Viktor drawled, and in the rearview he saw Katsuki’s jaw tighten. Viktor backed off in a rare admission of generosity. Or perhaps it was more of a concern for his own bodily safety. Regardless, the silence soon became unbearable. Perhaps Katsuki felt it too, because Viktor heard the small, sharp hitch in his breathing that preceded his next statement.

“I’ve been to Moscow. Not Saint Petersburg.”

“Moscow,” Viktor said contemplatively. “And what did you do there?”

“Business.” Tersely.

“Yes, I gathered that, thank you.” His voice was too sharp, the kind of tone Chris would interpret as friendly ribbing but a stranger would not. He corrected it. “I was asking for elaboration.”

“And I will not provide it,” Katsuki snapped viciously, but Viktor was unimpressed. Communicated this with a lazy glance through the rearview.

He said, “You have approximately one hour left in Tokyo, Katsuki Yuuri, and then you answer entirely to me. Do not make me hate you quite so early.” In return, Katsuki Yuuri sneered.

“Perhaps,” Chris murmured, for Viktor alone, “we should have requested someone else.”

“No.” Viktor liked this one. It would take some time to break him, surely, but the process would be fun. And he was enjoying himself so much already.

“Masochist,” Chris said, louder and disdainful now, and Katsuki’s gaze flickered between them distrustfully. He did not look quite as _much_ as he had in Okukawa’s domain, but he was still as beautiful when he shone with hateful uncertainty as he was while threatening Viktor with a switchblade or arguing with his superiors in ferocious Japanese or suggesting Nikiforov do deliciously business-inappropriate things to him in a Kabukicho alley.

Well. Perhaps Viktor was a masochist after all.

Briefly, watching Kasuki bid farewell to his girlfriend, or whatever she was to him, Viktor had had his doubts. The Okukawa brood was infamous for their ruthless nature, and while it had renowned them globally as assassins it had done little to promote healthy alliances with the other criminal families of the world. Such had been Nikolai Plisetsky’s objection to an Okukawa deal when Viktor had suggested it three years previously, and though Nikolai had nursed his own vices, his mistakes had never extended to international business.

One did not ally oneself with Okukawa Minako. Her assassins and her cocaine fetched a divine price on the market, and any old crime boss was welcome to pay her extortionate fees in exchange for her services, but one did not _bind_ oneself to her in any way. She would devour any potential partner alive.

That was what people said.

But in three years the unforgiving reputation of Minako and her child protégées had driven Viktor to obsession. He wanted to witness her teaching methods in action. He wanted to learn how the Plisetskys could improve. He wanted to see Tokyo, too, and he wanted the zero grade that Okukawa deals always promised. There were many reasons for the Tokyo trip, and only one of them was proving Nikolai Plisetsky’s festering corpse fucking wrong. Again.

But Katsuki Yuuri was not quite the stony-faced executioner legend had promised. Viktor could see it already--Katsuki was ruthless, yes, and he was clearly a protégé in many respects, but he was not without personal attachments. Not without rage or flaws like Viktor had expected. He loved the girl with the tattoos underneath her collar who could not speak Russian too much to be a perfect killer, hated subjugation too much to be a willing subordinate. He was younger than even Viktor had predicted, more volatile, and prettier too.

Whether he was weaker or stronger than Viktor Nikiforov still remained to be seen.

“And how long have you worked for Okukawa?” Viktor asked, just for something to do. Tokyo traffic was abhorrent but he didn't mind nearly as much as one would think he would, and the only thing that sat heavy in his chest was boredom, not anger.

Katsuki Yuuri studied his hands. Disinterest was damning in his voice. “Eight years.”

_Eight years_. But Katsuki was no blood heir, that was obvious. Had he been enlisted so early, off the streets? Had he been an impressionable gutter rat, easily ensnared as a child by Minako’s reputation, starting himself on this path as early as eight years ago? How Dickensonian.

Viktor didn't know whether the tightening in his throat was admiration or trepidation.

“And how old are you?” Viktor drawled. “Since I know so little about you, and you must know so much about me.”

Katsuki Yuuri narrowed his eyes. Said, “Twenty-one.”

“Cute.” That meant he had been thirteen. Older than little Yuri Plisetsky was now, but something told Viktor that Okukawa Minako did not apply the same lenient discipline to children as Yakov Feltsman did. She did not seem like a woman for whom gentleness was anything but weakness.

_I am not a_ thing _to be_ auctioned _off, Minako--_

Wonderful.

“And who is Okukawa Minako to you?” Viktor chose the taunt carefully. He wanted to irritate him, not drive him to homicide. Not so early, at least. “She’s rather...enigmatic, isn't she?”

Katsuki blinked at him in the mirror. Viktor elaborated, “Enigmatic means--”

“I _know_ what it means,” Katsuki Yuuri snapped, and Chris laughed. Rolled down the passenger window and lit a cigarette with the type of old money elegance only those utterly disenchanted with their own privilege could manage. Viktor looked at him darkly.

“Don’t smoke in the rental.”

“I opened the window,” Christophe Giacometti replied, tapping ash off the end of the cigarette. Glittering embers drifted to the pavement. “And I need a break. Your flirting is giving me hives.”

“I’m not--”

“Of course not.” Chris smiled knowingly. Viktor scowled.

To Katsuki, he said, “You didn't answer my question.”

“I thought better than to interrupt a lovers’ quarrel,” Katsuki drawled, and Chris looked to Viktor delightedly.

“I _like_ you, Katsuki Yuuri,” his best friend said with relish. Viktor shot him a warning glare. Traitor. “But I don't sleep with Russians anymore. They’re much too frigid.”

“We can't all be wannabe French aristocrats,” Viktor retorted fiercely, and Chris gestured at him with his lit cigarette.

“Case in point.”

And Katsuki Yuuri smiled. It was little more than a tiny quirk to his mouth--shy, certainly, but undeniably genuine. Viktor’s heart was in his mouth, and at the same time he felt a dark twinge of resentment that Chris had been the first to dredge a smile out of him. That had been Viktor’s aim.

Silence drew between them as Viktor floundered for something to say that would preserve that expression, and finally Katsuki spoke.

“Minako is my teacher,” he said, and the cool disinterest was back. Viktor mourned the smile, filed away for later the memory of the way his hand had fluttered self-consciously to conceal it. Decidedly not a stony executioner, then. “She’s brilliant.”

“You don't seem to like her very much,” Viktor remarked, and then wondered if he had gone too far. Katsuki’s eyes narrowed.

“That’s irrelevant.”

“Loyalty should always be tied to affection. Fear is not quite as powerful a motivator as people think it is.”

“I think fear is a wonderful motivator,” Katsuki said coolly. “Is _affection_ how you've kept all your followers?”

“Yes.” Viktor made a face at Chris and opened another window. “And those Robin Hold narcos you apparently think so lowly of keep themselves afloat the same way. If the public admires you, you're immortal.”

“I don't see the appeal of catering to public opinion,” Katsuki countered. “Groveling is for politicians. We’ve gotten along just fine on fear for decades.”

“Is that why no one in the underground will make a deal with you?” Viktor drawled. “Is that why you're isolated in the east when you could own several continents with those drugs of Minako's? Is that why you have no alliances and no insurance for your own business, Katsuki Yuuri? Because fear is your ally?”

Katsuki Yuuri looked at him for a long stretch of time. Viktor could feel his eyes on him, though he could not reciprocate the glare. “But you made a deal with us,” he said, like it was an endgame. It wasn't.

Viktor smiled. “That's because I don't fear you, Katsuki.” He pulled the rental into a concrete lot choked with weeds. Popovich and Leroy and Yakov were already there, conversing stiltedly around a few Okukawa bruisers Viktor did not recognize from the other night. “I admire you.”

* * *

 

On the day that Christophe Giacometti left for Switzerland, Katsuki Yuuri approached Viktor Nikiforov.

“I believe it's time for the world to know that I’m alive again,” he said carefully in the library, and Viktor looked at him and laughed.

“I disagree,” he drawled, and Yuuri blinked. Viktor Nikiforov had grown to fit his skin again since Yuuri’s return, was relaxed and confident and regal again. Yuuri did not like this improvement, because it made him feel as if he was set to suffer at the hands of whatever it was that had regifted Nikiforov his control. He narrowed his eyes.

Viktor Nikiforov was also icy and beautiful and sometimes when Katsuki Yuuri looked at his hands he thought he would not mind to have them wrapped around his throat if it meant Viktor would touch him.

These thoughts, also, he did not like. He decided not to entertain them.

“Why? Do you still plan to kill me?” This challenge would be doubly effective with a dip to his voice and a hand at the small of his back and a tilt to his chin as he murmured it in Nikiforov’s ear, he knew, but Yuuri refused to play such games anymore. He would not best Nikiforov by taking advantage of his old weakness for Yuuri, because he knew he could best him in other ways. Katsuki Yuuri was determined that the world know he was not the singular talent everyone thought him to be.

He would not touch Nikiforov also because he valued his fingers. And his tongue. And Viktor Nikiforov had promised that any attempt on Yuuri’s behalf to establish contact would promptly deprive him of both body parts.

Viktor looked at him simply, and his eyes said yes even as his mouth formed the words, “I have other things planned for you.”

Yuuri withdrew from him. Something cold had replaced his blood in his veins, and he disguised the shivering with a casual survey of the bookshelves. At least now he knew where he stood. The same place he had always stood, if only Yuuri had bothered to look past Viktor Nikiforov’s mouth and listen to his lies for once in his life.

“You’re a bad liar,” he murmured, and Viktor laughed again.

“And what do you hope to accomplish by letting the world know you're alive? A coup? I’m not nearly as stupid as you think I am, Yuuri.”

His given name on his lips made Yuuri shiver again, and this weakness was not becoming. Leftover infatuation, unmitigated desire, three years without sex--whatever it was that made Yuuri bend so willingly under Viktor Nikiforov’s words would have to be corrected. For god’s sake, he was a government pawn now, and even if he was not, it was very clear that Viktor wanted him dead. He had confessed to it.

“But you're not nearly as powerful as you think either,” Yuuri bit back, hopelessly. He was already losing this one. Even without Giacometti here Viktor had grown bolder in the past weeks, while Yuuri had not. Viktor had taken all necessary preliminary steps to winning back his kingdom while Yuuri had hidden in his bedroom with a tower of novels and a shitty replacement smartphone, texting government agents.

Yuuri was terrified of Viktor, and he was worried it showed. But it was hard to not be terrified of Viktor Nikiforov, even when one was Katsuki Yuuri.

“I’m correcting that,” Viktor drawled, and Yuuri _hated_ him. Hated his self-assurance and the fact that he did not mind that Yuuri could see through his lies and his awareness of the truth that he was better than Yuuri in all things.

“What am I, then? Another tithe?” He knew this was not the right course of action, knew that he was infinitely better off leaving this damned house than staying to bicker, but he was also angry and his anger was clouding his judgment. “Might I remind you that it didn't work the first time.”

“If I wanted you dead in order to elevate my own status, wouldn't I want the world to know you're alive, Yuuri?” And it made sense, too much sense. He had thought this through. He may have been a bad liar, but he was a good strategist. “I told you: I have other plans.”

Yuuri turned his back on him in careful calculation, made sure Viktor was watching when he removed a very specific book from the shelves. The same copy of _Dorian Gray_ that Yuuri had ruined last week. Then it _was_ a first edition, because Viktor had saved it even broken as it was, had valued its price over its condition.

Or maybe he had liked it regardless of it being in two pieces now. Viktor liked damaged things.

Yuuri looked at its pieces with an expression of distaste. Viktor Nikiforov watched him in amusement. He drawled, “I told you that you're welcome to the library, but if you're going to continue assassinating my books, I might have to relinquish those privileges.”

Yuuri did not look at him, but blinked at the page. How fitting. Drowsily, he held the latter half of novel out to Nikiforov, on whose first page someone--not Yuuri--had underlined a phrase.

_Christ! What a thing I must have worshipped!_

Viktor smiled. It was not kind. His eyes flickered to Yuuri when he said, “Is this a confession?”

Yuuri tilted his chin upwards, narrowed his eyes. “I’m sure that you can kill me, Viktor. But do you think it will end well for you if you do?”

“Why would you care?” Viktor tucked the book half onto a shelf, horizontally on top of several other novels. “You’d be dead.”

“I’d save room for you in hell,” Yuuri replied easily.

Viktor Nikiforov stepped toward him softly, and Yuuri turned to fully face him to mask the tensing of his shoulders. “I thought you didn't believe in hell,” Viktor murmured. Yuuri smothered the urge to take several steps backward.

“I don't. But I think the universe might make an exception for us.”

“Us.” Yuuri did not like the way he said it. Now he did retreat, a half-step back before he realized that it was a forfeiture and froze. Viktor raised an eyebrow.

“You're a very interesting thing, Katsuki Yuuri.”

“I am not yours.” An old phrase, one he hadn't meant to repeat. Viktor looked delighted at the concession.

“I never implied that you were,” he said. “But I’m glad you're thinking of it.”

This was too much. Yuuri had not wanted to be toyed with; he had simply wanted his way. He snarled. Lost control.

The knife was out of his pocket, between them in a moment. This was not advised. Yuuri would suffer for threatening him, and suffer divinely.

But the knife handle was pointed in Viktor’s direction, the sheathed blade in Yuuri’s. “If you want me dead then _do it_ , Viktor. Enough with the games.”

Viktor’s eyes slid to the familiar weapon in detached amusement, and then came to rest on Yuuri’s face.

“You were always endearingly suicidal,” he condescended. “Good to know that hasn't changed.”

“ _Fuck_ you.”

The knife exchanged hands so quickly that Yuuri did not feel Viktor’s fingers close around his own until the touch was gone, had no time to react appropriately to the contact. Then the blade was open, the point at his carotid artery, and Yuuri took a panicked step back until his head slammed into the bookshelf and the knife jabbed at the vital space beneath his jaw dangerously.

“Don’t tempt me,” Viktor said lowly, and if Yuuri wasn't terrified he might have admired the way the thrill of homicide always lit up Viktor’s face. Might have found beauty in the severe intent in his eyes, the cruel twist to his mouth.

As it was, Yuuri was terrified, and all he saw reflected in Viktor’s eyes was his own immediate mortality.

He wondered what bleeding out from one’s carotid felt like. It was quick, Yuuri knew, and thus a merciful kind of assassination, but he had never been particularly charmed by the concept of drowning in his own blood. He did not trust Viktor to be kind enough to not hit a few other veins, just for fun, before the death blow either.

_This is what you asked for._ Minako, reminding him of himself. Yuko’s visitations reminded him when to be human, but Minako’s purpose was to remind when not to be. _Now reciprocate._

He couldn't. He couldn't.

He wasn't sure if it was reluctance--even now--to break Viktor’s no-touch rule, if it was the rising panic in his throat as he became aware of the deadly corner he had backed himself into, if it was the cool emptiness in Viktor’s expression that left nothing to the imagination about his seriousness. But he couldn't.

Yuuri’s body knew what to do. Bring up his knee (a dishonorable, but effective, move), disarm him, hit a few nonlethal blood vessels as he used the switchblade to carve a ragged line across his chest (solely to ruin his expensive shirt), then slit his throat before the extent of Viktor’s own folly had even registered on his face. And his body _wanted_ to do it, too.

But Yuuri did not. _Could_ not. And so he let Viktor press the knife’s point into the space beneath his jaw until he broke the fragile skin and a warm substance trickled down his throat and Yuuri would not make a sound as he killed him he _refused_ to give Viktor that pleasure--

But Viktor had relented, and though the knife was still at his throat it hovered a centimeter off his skin, no longer flush against his neck. Yuuri blinked, and Viktor mirrored him, and his expression was no longer hyperfocused but lazily confident. There was something almost intoxicated about it.

Yuuri’s head was still tilted back in the way it had been to maximize distance between the knife and his own body, and he felt every square centimeter of skin erupt into heat when Viktor touched his throat. Dipped his fingertips in the rivulet of blood on its way to his collarbone, dragged them upwards to catch the excess evidence. “Wouldn't want to ruin your sweater,” he murmured. “Especially considering I bought it.”

“How--” Breath hitched like a gasp in his throat. Viktor raised an eyebrow. “Considerate of you.”

“Thank you. I agree.” For an unbearable moment, his fingers lingered over Yuuri’s pulse, and he smiled to feel it beat frantically as a result of his proximity.

_You're afraid._ Yuuri shut his eyes against the memory, momentarily forgot the consequences of leaving Viktor unscrutinized in such a situation. _I didn't know you had it in you to be afraid._

And then: _I’m always afraid. I've learned how to use it, is all._ If only he remember now how to harness that fear, instead of letting it consume him.

Yuuri opened his eyes.

Viktor Nikiforov’s fingers slid from his pulse to his jawline softly, and the meaning in his gaze changed. Face melted into gentler lines, lips parted imperceptibly, and his gaze was wondrous where it had been calmly enraged. Quietly, he said, “It's been so long, hasn't it?”

“And whose fault is that?” Yuuri snapped, impressed at the levelness of his own voice. His head spun, and he thought he might faint. Everything about Viktor Nikiforov was _too close too close too close--_

He stiffened as Viktor’s touch slipped upward to his cheek, and the way his hand curved around his face was uncomfortably close to a caress. Viktor frowned, and Yuuri tried valiantly not to flinch.

“I miss this, you know. It’s a shame. You could have been--been so much _more_.”

“Like you?” Yuuri spat, because he couldn't help it. Who was Viktor to proclaim himself better than Yuuri? His success was built on fortunate chance and Yakov Feltsman’s brilliance and Nikolai Plisetsky’s money, and that was all. There was nothing self-made about the man Viktor Nikiforov had become.

And yet, Viktor’s smile was slow and minutely satisfied.

“Precisely like me,” he said, and Yuuri tasted his own blood on his lips when Viktor traced them with his thumb and he could no longer hold himself still. He wrenched his head backwards and even the spots that burst into his vision when he slammed his crown on the shelf behind him were better than the helplessness Viktor’s touch inspired. Yuuri panted from the sudden pain, narrowed his eyes, and spat, “Do _not_ touch me again.”

Viktor Nikiforov laughed. Withdrew his hand from the space between them, but did not step back. He, too, narrowed his eyes.

“I’ll have you beg for me again, Katsuki Yuuri. Make no mistake about that.” Now he stepped back, primly. He looked with distaste to Yuuri’s blood drying on his fingertips. “And then, yes, you will die. But not before I’ve finished with you.”

“I will _not--”_ What? Beg? Die? _Want?_ He could not finish the claim. Hatred was choking him.

Viktor adjusted his cuffs, carefully, as not to get blood on them. He tilted his head, as if Yuuri was a charming amusement. The way he moved was akin to a predator, lithe and silent and beautiful. Yuuri had never hated him, nor feared him, so much.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Welcome home, Yuuri. We’ve missed you.”

* * *

 

“You told him. That you’re going to kill him.”

“I did.”

“Has it ever occurred to you how utterly _moronic_ everything you do is? Or are you too infatuated with some fucking yakuza to notice?”

“Mila.” He did not spar with Mila very often. They were not an even match, her being too small and young for Viktor to feel truly comfortable hitting her. Fortuitously, she did not have the same qualms about hitting him.

Already, Viktor missed Chris. It had been two days.

“I’m just _saying_ , Viktor, that you've sacrificed your only advantage--that's _surprise_ , by the way--in some pathetic attempt to scare him. Did he even look scared?” She punctuated this with a lower cut to his ribs, and Viktor blocked it and reciprocated, landed the hit. She gasped in mild surprise.

“He’s not nearly as certain as everyone appears to think he is, Mila,” Viktor chided, and Mila scoffed.

“Because you know him so well, yeah?” A scrap of red hair was caught in her mouth, and she tore it out irritably before hitting him so hard in the face that Viktor briefly considered the possibility of whiplash. “Blowing him three years ago doesn't mean you know all his deepest secrets, Nikiforov. Only that you blew him three years ago.”

“And you're an expert on such things now?” Viktor panted.

“I feel that's more your area of expertise, darling.” She had broken an acrylic on his face, and she regarded the bloody mess of her index finger with disdain. “Damn.”

“Vanity’s consequences,” Viktor remarked, and swept her feet out from beneath her so she landed flat on her back. After a moment of vehement winded cursing, she allowed him to help her up. “Don’t be vulgar.”

“I don't think you get what I’m saying, Vitya. I’m trying--”

“I _do_ get what you're saying, Babicheva,” Viktor snapped. “I’m choosing you ignore your damning familiarity instead. Consider it a gift, from me to you.”

She reinstated the sparring without warning him. If she had hoped to knock him on his ass through his own lack of preparedness, she was disappointed. Viktor caught her wrist, used her momentum to spin her round, yanked her body against his and pressed her own arm against her throat until she choked. Held her there, until she gasped out, “Yield, yield, _yield--”_

And then he let her go. Mila Babicheva took a wobbly step away from him, shook her head ferociously, retched. _“God_. Who taught you that?”

“Who do you think?”

Mila Babicheva looked to him disdainfully. “You better have a damned good assassination planned, Nikiforov.”

“I was hoping you could help me.”

She tilted her chin. Bloody-handed and panting, with that fierce illumination to her narrow, red-curl-framed face, she looked like a witch. A very young witch. Nevertheless, a good ally, and a dangerous foe.

“And what could _I_ do to help?” she said warily.

“He knows I’m planning to kill him, and he's still here,” Viktor said. “Sleeping in my house. Why do you think he would do that?”  
  
Mila shrugged. “He’s a slut?” Viktor cut his eyes at her.

“Be serious, for _once_ , Mila--”

“I _was--”_

“There’s something I have that he values more than his own safety. I want you to find out what it is.” They were finished sparring. Viktor was tired, and Mila was practically radiating vindication. She would hurt herself trying to pay Viktor back for besting her a moment ago, and Viktor was bored of enabling others’ self-destruction. “That's how you help me.”

Mila was gathering her things, tossed Viktor her bloodstained towel carelessly. She met his eyes when he caught it. “And what,” she drawled, and it was in complete seriousness, “if all he wants is you?”

Viktor smiled. “Flattering. I doubt it. But if so--” He shrugged. “This will be all the more fun.”

Mila gave him a long, searching look. Viktor knew his intent was written plainly across his face, and if anyone could read its honesty, it was Babicheva. Unlike Viktor, she did not make a habit of disappointing.

Mila nodded. Once.

“Why not?” Her voice was light, but her expression was not. “I love a good homicide.”

* * *

 

_progress?_

_?_

_??????_

The next time his phone buzzed, Yuuri was going to break Phichit Chulanont’s fingers.

_working on it,_ he typed, and left it at that.

He was working on it. Not fast enough, admittedly, but he could be moving faster without all the interruptive text messages.

It had been three days since his last encounter with Viktor Nikiforov had confirmed Yuuri’s fears of Viktor’s plans to kill him. Three hours since Yuuri had gone to dinner with Ji Guang Hong and enchanted him with stories of Yuuri’s times in Shanghai--all hideously embellished tales, but all the more effective for their mistruth--and asked him quietly how he felt working so far from home. One day since he had done similarly with Leo de la Iglesia, whittling away two hours of precious time discussing cars and then remarking pensively on how he missed the straightforwardness of American business.

Yuuri was working on it. But he was also running out of time.

Jean-Jacques Leroy was proving to be his most reliable confidante, which would have been amusing if it was not utterly useless to Yuuri. JJ was too volatile to conscript in a coup so early in the game, and he had a big mouth. He was admirable muscle, but he was no spy.

_work faster_

Yuuri bit down on the inside of his cheek and tasted copper. He typed a furious reply in Japanese, then deleted it. Retried.

_im doing the best i can. i apologize that it's not good enough for you and all your free time on a fucking island._

Perhaps those sentiments were not more censored. But they were more concise.

_it's surprisingly boring, for an island_

Yuuri rolled his eyes.

_spare me._

The end of their first month in Petersburg was fast approaching, and a lone Thai man who could not speak Russian would start to draw attention if Phichit extended his stay in the hotel. Fuchū administration had arranged for and paid the lease for a small flat on Vasilevsky Island for his convenience, and Yuuri tried not to be resentful of Phichit Chulanont fucking around on sleepy Vasilevsky while Yuuri crept around homicidal lovers in Nevsky Prospekt. It was difficult.

_do u at least have information for me?_

Yuuri did, but none of it was very good. He dragged his hands down his face and readjusted his legs beneath him. He needed a drink, but it was an impossible request. He couldn't afford to be anything but sharply sober now, more than ever, even when he was locked in his own bedroom late in the evening.

_giacometti is in switzerland. nikiforov does plan to kill me, probably within the next month. im working on converting the newer ones, but it's slow going._

Phichit’s reply was scintillating: _yikes_

_i have eleven months left_ , Yuuri reminded him, though it was meant more as comfort to himself.

_theoretically. but not if he’s actively trying to kill u_

_as always, you are fantastic at assuaging my concerns._

_uve told me several times it's not my job to babysit u_

It irritated Yuuri to be reminded of such a fact. He tossed his phone to the foot of the bed so he wouldn't be tempted to shatter its screen. Fuchū had already been less than pleased to hear he’d replaced his first phone. They wouldn't take kindly to a third one.

He could do this. Viktor was useless without his cult, and Yuuri was in the process of effectively pulling every single one of his men out from under him. But he needed more _time_.

Two knocks on his bedroom door. Yuuri looked in its direction with mild panic, as if the sound was in itself somehow accusatory.

_No one knows._ Certainly not Viktor Nikiforov. He was too in love with himself to suspect that Yuuri was dancing three steps ahead of him already. The very thought would be nearly offensive to him.

Yuuri cleared his throat, slipped his phone under the pillow, and snatched from the bedside table a random book. “What?” he demanded, without making a move for the door.

“Open the door.” Babicheva. Yuuri closed his eyes.

“For what purpose?”

He knew when Mila leaned against the doorframe by the rustle of clothing, the sturdy sigh of the house’s old wood, the way her voice magnified with her next words. “I’m checking in on you. Consider it an olive branch.”

“I’m alive.” His eyes narrowed, and he regarded the locked door with wariness. “Thank you for your concern.” Olive branch rejected.

Mila knew it. Her tone sharpened. Yuuri found he preferred Viktor’s new protégé better this way. Cruelty showcased her talents better than coquetry did. She was like Yuuri in that respect. “For Christ’s sake, Katsuki, open the door.”

Yuuri stood. He took his time to the door, and when he opened it he stopped its inward motion with his foot. Perhaps this confrontation was unavoidable, but Yuuri could do his damn best to make it on his terms.

“What do you want?”

“I’m checking in on you,” she repeated evenly. “Because I don't trust you. And I’m curious to see what the infamous Katsuki Yuuri does with his free time.”

Yuuri leveled his gaze at her. “I’m reading.” Mila looked vaguely disappointed.

“I should have known you were boring.”

“My apologies.”

“Doesn't matter. That’s not really what I’m here for.” Mila laid her head against the doorframe and blinked innocently. “Yakov is here.”

Yuuri felt his mouth thin, knew he was showing emotion he had not meant to bare. He hadn't spoken to Yakov at any length in the weeks he had slept in Viktor’s home, had done his best avoid him, mostly because Yuuri was not sure he could keep from killing him if given the opportunity. “And you thought this was relevant to my interests because?”

“Aww, _Yuuri,”_ Mila condescended, and Katsuki Yuuri did not care for her familiarity. Mila Babicheva had been nineteen when he had last known her, and she had no right to refer him as an equal. Her undeserved power in this house was infuriating. “Don't you want to have a conversation with your executioner? It’s been so _long.”_

An echo of familiar words: _It's been so long, hasn't it?_

Yuuri recoiled involuntarily. He had known that Babicheva was Viktor’s confidante in this new era, but he had not known until now the extent of what he told her. Her knowledge of how Viktor had conquered him three days ago was unbearably intimate.

Triumphantly, Babicheva smiled. Yuuri straightened his spine. Said levelly, “I have no desire to speak to Yakov Feltsman at the moment.”

Mila inspected her nails. One of them was broken, painfully so. Whatever had torn off the acrylic had also torn a considerable chunk of flesh from her nail bed. Mila saw him watching and curved her fingers into talons, molded her mouth into a smirk that looked perfectly carnivorous. “It's not an invitation. Your presence is demanded. I’ve come to fetch you.”

“To fetch me,” Yuuri repeated flatly. He wondered if it was worth the effort to object to such language. He wondered if slamming the door on Mila Babicheva’s hands would be satisfying enough to make up for the painful early execution it would grant him.

“Yes. So change your clothes, please. I’ll wait.”

Yuuri did not end up slamming the door on her hands. She removed them too quickly.

Viktor had finally had the ruined Basquiat painting removed, and the wall was unnervingly bare now. The place felt doubly wide, and Yuuri doubly vulnerable, without the painting to survey the sitting room’s ongoings.

Yakov Feltsman did not acknowledge Yuuri when he entered the room. Viktor did, barely, with heavy-lidded eyes and a disdainful mouth, before his gaze slid back to Feltsman. Yuuri did not let his own irritation at this cool reception reflect on his face. It had not been long ago when every aspect of his presence would have dominated Viktor’s attention. Now, Katsuki Yuuri was little more than an annoyance.

How very low he’d become.

“Yakov,” he drawled, helping himself unbidden to a seat and folding his hands in his lap to keep them under tight control. “Still puppeteering an empire, I see.”

And now he had both their attention. The enraged flash in Viktor’s eyes thrilled him. The lack of any sort of emotion in Yakov’s made him shiver.

“Katsuki,” Yakov mirrored. “Still a damned cockroach, are you?”

Yuuri’s fingers twitched. He made himself smile. “I don't care for that comparison. I’m much prettier than that.”

This was Viktor’s confidence, and these were Viktor’s words. Yuuri did not have the energy to falsify his own deadly self-possession; he borrowed from a successful model instead.

The shift in his expression meant Viktor knew this. His eyes narrowed, but Yuuri did not deign to look at him. He did not take his eyes off Feltsman.

“You wanted me?” He let his left hand drift upwards, turned it casually to allow Viktor to admire how it had healed. It was still an undeniably damaged thing, not swollen now perhaps but still crooked and scarred, but it had come along beautifully in these past weeks. Yuuri hoped he noticed, and drew the rightful comparisons between that growth and what Yuuri had planned for himself. “Please make it quick. I have better things to do.”

“Like what?” Viktor snapped, and the sharp way Yakov looked to him confirmed Yuuri’s suspicions. He had been ordered not to speak, like a _child_ , but Yuuri was so infuriating to him that he could not help but disobey.

_Good._ Yuuri surveyed his face coolly. “Speak to me civilly and maybe I'll bother telling you.”

Viktor stood. Even in its suddenness, the action was incredibly elegant. Baranovskaya was a fantastic teacher, and she and Feltsman had created a beautiful type of monster. Yuuri watched their creation leave the room with a dim sort of surprise.

He collected himself before he blinked at Yakov, tilted his head in mocking respect. “Human beings are disobedient and flawed by nature, Yakov. You really mustn't blame yourself for the way he turned out.”

Something in the adjacent room shattered, which meant Viktor had heard and objected to the appraisal of his character. Yuuri dipped his head and looked apologetically delighted.

“What is your intention in coming here?” Yakov demanded. “In staying?”

Yuuri shrugged. “I’m corrupting your heir. I never quite finished three years ago, did I? Considering how he still idolizes you.”

“This false confidence is foolish, Katsuki,” Yakov snapped. “I know you too well for it.”

At this, Yuuri nearly stood. He gripped the arms of the chair and hissed, “You know _nothing_ about me--”

“I know that you do not do anything without thinking, and I know you do not simply want to ascend to the same position you held before Barcelona. You were never satisfied with being beneath anyone.”

“I wouldn't say that.” Yuuri contemplated the ceiling sagely. “There were plenty of times I enjoyed being beneath Viktor Nikiforov.”

This was too much for his delicate Russian sensibilities. Yakov Feltsman snarled. “Tell me what you want, Katsuki, or I will kill you right here.”

Katsuki Yuuri fixed him with a dangerously blank expression. “You know what I want,” he murmured.

“Then you won't have it.”

_“It?_ Is that how you talk about people here, Feltsman?” Movement drew Yuuri’s attention to the doorway, and he confided a sharp-edged smile in Viktor. The other man was leaning against the doorframe in a flimsy imitation of carelessness, a tumbler of something transparent and caramel-colored in his hand. As Yuuri watched, he extended the glass in a mocking toast to Yuuri and then knocked back the entire drink. “And you all claimed I was the inhuman one.”

“You still deny that you are?” Yakov raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn't have expected such a lack of self-awareness from you.”

“At least _I_ didn't sacrifice my entire business to Okukawa Minako for the sake of putting down one fucking yakuza because he bedded my heir,” Yuuri snapped, and the look on both their faces was worth the crack in his facade. He reassumed his calm. “I am not that selfish.”

Viktor Nikiforov rearranged his face into a sneer and turned on his heel. Left the room again. Yuuri was pleased to know his presence was unsettling him so, but he really wished he would stay. Yuuri was in his element here, now, and he wanted Viktor to see it.

_This is what you gave up. This is what you sacrificed._

This was proof that Yuuri was, had always been, more than Viktor. This was proof that he was not just some pretty toy for Minako to show off to her investors, that he was not just the self-destructive mess of nerves he had been in the library, and that he would never again be Viktor Nikiforov’s. That he would not _beg._

_Mourn me._

“I do not expect you to grasp the motivation of protecting one’s family, Katsuki Yuuri,” Yakov Feltsman said, and Yuuri laughed.

_“Family?_ Do you consider him a son, Yakov? How many fathers does he have to kill for you to grasp that that position is best left unoccupied?” His voice dropped, tone became infinitely more severe. “I’m most surprised that you haven't had him killed yet too. He’s useless now, isn't he? Viktor Nikiforov alive is more detrimental to your business than Nikiforov dead. As Nikolai Plisetsky was, and as I was. When are you going to off him too?”

Yakov looked at him inscrutably. Yuuri knew by the absence of a response that he was right. That Yakov had considered such things before.

He hoped that Viktor was listening very carefully.

Yakov said, “You will never understand what this job takes, because you could never _see_ past _yourself--”_

Yuuri interrupted, and began anew. “I do understand now.” His voice had taken on a softer affection, but he made sure it was no less dangerous for this. He wanted Viktor to know, to believe, but not to think that this was fueled by rage alone. “You want me to do that for you. And then you groom Mila Babicheva for his throne and Yuri Plisetsky continues to be a prince in this household and Katsuki Yuuri becomes just some dead yakuza drug runner who never deserved the things he had here in Saint Petersburg. Right?”

Yuuri did not very much care if what he was saying was true--though by the look on Yakov’s face it was certainly a method of action he had considered. All that mattered was that Viktor thought it true. All that mattered was that it made him doubt.

“I won't murder in your name or for your benefit, Yakov Feltsman. I am not Russian, and I owe you no allegiance. And Viktor Nikiforov is worth much more to me alive than dead, anyway.” This concession, so close to the actual truth, was dangerous. But it was essential that Viktor hear it. “Are we finished here?”

“We are not--”

Yuuri stood. It didn't matter whether they were done or not. He had said his piece. And he had been honest when he said he had better things to do.

“Good night, Yakov.” He made to leave with the last word.

But Viktor had returned, was lounging too easily against the door again, and Yuuri’s eyes caught on him though he tried his best to resist. He had made himself another drink. There was a nice flush to his cheeks, but his gaze was sharp. Alert. Yuuri watched him for a moment too long before he narrowed his eyes and began to turn away, and inexplicably, Viktor Nikiforov smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "what a thing I must have worshipped" line in Dorian is part of a scene where Basil Hallward, the artist who painted Dorian Gray's portrait, confesses that he is too much in love with Dorian and they are both thus being punished for their obsession (Dorian with himself, Basil with Dorian) by the hedonistic monster Dorian's become. Following this confession, Dorian murders Basil when Basil promises to help him try to save his soul, and Dorian's life gets pretty shitty from then on.
> 
> The quote from the Master and Margarita in Viktor's dedication is from the devil about Pontius Pilate and how he is suffering (more of his own volition than anything that is being done to him in hell) for his role in Jesus' crucifixion.
> 
> I do have a tumblr, and I'm on that hellscape way more often than I am here, so feel free to contact me through there! I have a lot to say at all times about Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas and The Handmaiden, and obviously yoi too. My url is fortinbra.
> 
> Thanks as always for reading, and feel free to drop a comment or kudos if you'd like! 
> 
> xx


	8. Religion

_"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”_

“Mm,” Yuuri hummed against his shoulder, smiled drowsily when Viktor dipped his head and his lips brushed Yuuri’s hair. “Rather pessimistic way to begin a book.”

“It’s a rather pessimistic book,” Viktor reminded him, and he sounded much too pleased about the fact. Yuuri blinked slowly, tipped his head back so that he could almost look at him, and allowed his smile to uncurl a bit wider.

“I forget. You don't care for happy things, do you?”

“I care for you.” Quiet confession made even softer by the yellow glow seeping in through the expansive window behind them, the sleepy warmth that spread across his skin from each of the many points of contact between their bodies, the way his mouth touched briefly to Yuuri’s forehead and Yuuri closed his eyes in utter contentment. “Are you happy?”

“Mmm. Very much so.”

“That’s good,” Viktor murmured. “I’m glad.”

Yuuri reassumed his previous position: head against his shoulder, legs tucked beneath himself, one arm in his lap and one entwined with Viktor’s so Yuuri could more easily trace the path of a vein from his wrist to his elbow. Viktor shivered at the touch, and Yuuri smiled. “Go on.”

Willingly, Viktor did. The words came easily to his lips and fell quietly into Yuuri’s hair and Yuuri had never been happier to hear Russian in his life. It was beautifully written, to be sure, and anything which Viktor liked Yuuri was inclined to enjoy out of pure infatuation, but Yuuri suspected he liked it mostly for this. Unassuming intimacy, the kind that did not demand anything at all from Yuuri but his presence, tangled inelegantly on the sofa in one of the library’s many private niches, the window spilling the day’s last reddish sunlight onto them both so it caught Viktor’s light hair and spun it effortlessly into gold, warmed Yuuri’s face and filled him with the type of unguarded drowsiness with which he had not trusted himself for a long time.

His fingers twined with Viktor’s, and the latter's thumb traced gently ruinous circles on Yuuri’s skin, and Yuuri did not realize he was dozing until he heard from a distance Viktor’s voice shift quietly into amusement.

“Would you like me to stop?”

Katsuki Yuuri wanted nothing less in the world. “Please don't,” he murmured. The world beneath his eyelids was a glorious shade of muted red-gold. He would give anything for this peace again, for the quiet sleep Viktor’s voice wove for him. _Go on._

But his head had slipped from its previous space on Viktor’s shoulder, and he realized with some measure of embarrassment that Viktor had caught his elbow as he had begun to fall into his lap. Too quickly, he righted himself, opened his eyes, and the change in his body’s equilibrium made his head spin. A short, wordless complaint escaped him, and Viktor looked rueful. Yuuri wished he wouldn't.

“I--”

Viktor said quickly, “You're fine. Don't apologize.” Yuuri blinked sleepily.

“Okay,” he mumbled. His eyelids were wonderfully heavy, a sober sort of calm Yuuri had come to appreciate and expect in Viktor Nikiforov’s presence. How strange, given their first encounter, how Viktor had come to be synonymous with safety for Yuuri. Synonymous with _home_. “Okay.”

After that, it took little more convincing than Viktor Nikiforov gently pulling him into his lap to get him to settle again. This was nicer. This was what Yuuri had wanted, but had not felt comfortable asking for. He had it now.

“Are you sure?” A hand stroking his hair, slowly, slowly, slowly separating his soul from his body. Yuuri had hypothesized about the ways Viktor could touch him to make him feel this way, but he had never considered that it would be as simple as this. “I can stop. I don't mind.”

“No. I like it.” The confession was not quite a conscious one. Regardless, some half-asleep part of Yuuri considered it imperative that Viktor continue. Perhaps it was the part that liked what he was doing to his hair so much. “I do.”

He knew Viktor smiled by the way his fingers paused briefly near Yuuri’s temples, knew it because Viktor always _felt_ better than he acted and this brief happiness was enough to make him forget all motor functions for a moment. Just one agonizingly eternal moment.

Then Viktor Nikiforov said, “God, I love you,” and his fingertips trailed down Yuuri’s chest and inspired all kinds of deliciously awake desires.

“Mm,” Yuuri agreed, because he could formulate no other coherent thought, and then Viktor began again to read:

_“Although Stepan Arkadyich was roundly guilty before his wife and felt it himself, almost everyone in the house, even the nanny, Darya Alexandrovna’s chief friend, was on his side.”_

As he read, he traced the line of Yuuri’s jaw absently, the bridge of his nose, the angle of his mouth. His reading voice was different from his public voice and different from the voice he reserved for Yuuri in private too. It was reverent, hushed and more distinctly accented like this, and Yuuri soon lost focus on the meaning of the Russian and was utterly charmed just by the way it sounded in Viktor Nikiforov’s mouth. The phrase _silver-tongued_ had never held any weight for him before now.

A year ago, he would never have allowed himself this. A year ago, this would have been a deadly trap, an embarrassingly private baring of his soul, and a sure way to get Minako to punish him for not heeding her warning about forbidden entanglements. But a year ago, Katsuki Yuuri had not loved Viktor Nikiforov.

 _I_ _do love you._ _I do, I do_. Yuuri wanted to confess it, but he could not because the barrier between sleep and waking had blurred again and he was heavy with the former. Viktor sought out his hand, which was curled against Yuuri’s throat, and threaded their fingers again. And still, he did not stop reading. And still, Yuuri said nothing.

Instead he fell asleep in Viktor Nikiforov’s lap to Tolstoy with sunlight and contented exhaustion and a peculiar type of feeling Yuuri thought maybe was _belonging_ settling quietly into his bones.

* * *

 

"How do you feel about breakfast in Nevsky?”

Viktor Nikiforov was at his door. The invitation was not so much an invitation as a demand and Katsuki Yuuri would not have said no even if he had been brave enough to say anything at all.

It had been too long now. Giacometti would be back within the week and Popovich had recently sent word that he was wrapping up his job in Madrid and would return in a fortnight and Yuuri could not do what he had planned with them both at home in Petersburg again. He needed to act. And acting meant attaching himself to Nikiforov, regardless if it made Yuuri’s palms sweat and his brain replay six years of fucking trauma over and over and over again.

“If you insist,” Yuuri said, finally. Viktor Nikiforov nodded.

“I do.”

Yuuri studied his face for a moment too long, and then he shut his bedroom door firmly. Locked it. Laid his forehead against the heavy oak and did not allow himself to breathe lest Viktor hear.

Katsuki Yuuri was a coward who could not decide when he was to be cowardly. He was only brave on occasion, and no lone conversation with Viktor Nikiforov was ever one of those occasions.

He dressed numbly, unlocked the door silently, and stared at Nikiforov in a way that was less challenging and more lost. Viktor smiled, and it was sharp.

“You’re a bit underdressed to be seen with me,” he said scathingly. “Don’t you think?”

Yuuri did not know what to think. He scowled to conceal it, leaned against the door jamb in a careful manner aimed to look utterly careless. He suspected his throat was too tight to pull it off.

“I thought you didn't want to be seen in public with me,” he said. “I thought I was more useful to you still a secret.” The words were invariably bitter. Viktor laughed.

“Don't flatter yourself, Yuuri; I'm not taking you to the fucking Shalyapin. I don’t want you anywhere I can’t put you down, if need be.”

Eyes closed. “How sweet.” _Too much too much too much._ That's what Viktor Nikiforov was. Yuuri had liked it, when they were on the same side. No longer.

Intrinsically he felt Viktor reach out to him, and his eyes snapped open and he lifted his chin and stepped promptly out of range. Rather than taking his jaw in his hand, Viktor’s fingers simply grazed Yuuri’s throat, and there was a fraction of displeasure in the turn of his mouth. Viktor Nikiforov did not get denied the things he wanted, historically. Especially not by Katsuki Yuuri.

But he withdrew his hand without protest. Then he cleared his throat. “Change your clothes,” he said brusquely. “And we’ll go when you look fucking respectable.”

There was nothing inherently disreputable about Yuuri’s current Burberry collared shirt, besides perhaps that it was clearly four seasons old and somewhere in the inside of the cuff there was a stubborn bloodstain from a coke binge in 2014, and Yuuri expressed his displeasure at Viktor’s insinuation that it was unfit for his company with a scowl. When Nikiforov did not relent (and Yuuri had never anticipated he would, for Viktor’s consumptive vanity was surpassed only by his distaste for Katsuki Yuuri now), Yuuri turned on his heel and returned to the armoire.

He left the door open. Viktor watched him undo his collar with carefully projected disdain. Studied the undoing of the rest of the buttons with a slight elevation in interest.

Yuuri rolled his eyes as he shrugged the Burberry off his shoulders, and Viktor must have noticed, because he laughed softly. His fingers tapped out a soft rhythm on the doorframe.

“I’m allowed to look, am I not?”

Yuuri turned his back to him carefully, carefully. He was overwhelmingly conscious of the vulnerable position in which the action placed him. He did not care. He couldn't stand the hungry expression on Viktor’s face. Letting him watch him change was suddenly not such a fantastic idea anymore. Yuuri’s skin crawled.

“Anything else will cost you.” Yuuri tilted his head subtly to see, confirmed that Viktor was still where he belonged in the doorway and no closer. Yuuri’s shoulders relaxed fractionally.

Viktor made a sound in his throat that might have been amusement or possibly admiration, but was most likely simply disdain. He tipped his head back to survey the ceiling, and Yuuri found maintaining his own personhood easier when he could not see Viktor’s eyes. “You can take the whore out of Kabukicho, but evidently, he’ll always be a whore.”

“I’m predictable that way.” The suit coat bunched involuntarily in his hands. This, too, was out of style. Everything Yuuri owned now was three years past fashion and four years technologically obsolete. It was very telling, really, of his own place in the Nikiforov house. “Why change, when it's always served me so well?”

“Did whoring serve you well in Fuchū?” Too far. Yuuri turned to face him again, and his expression was icily cool.

“Don’t talk about Fuchū like you have _any_ idea--”

Viktor interrupted, “Who gave you the scars?”

And Yuuri blinked, because he had forgotten they were there. He had forgotten that turning his naked back on Viktor Nikiforov would confess so brazenly to them. He tried to speak, and the words caught in his throat. Tried a second time.

“They were--old friends.”

“Minako,” Viktor said, and Yuuri shook his head too fiercely.

 _“No.”_ And this one word was much too transparent, much too raw. Yuuri righted the angle of his spine, the lift of his chin. “Never Minako.”

Viktor drawled, “Hero worship gets you killed, Katsuki.”

“Don't remind me,” Yuuri snapped, and where the _fuck_ was this honesty coming from and how could he send it back because the glorious light to Viktor Nikiforov’s eyes was damning and these confessions were deadly and Katsuki Yuuri so bared was a _dead man--_

There was silence so loud it echoed in his skull. Briefly, briefly, Viktor looked stunned. Yuuri hastened to fix whatever part of his own facade he had shattered. The entirety of it, undoubtedly.

Softly, he said, “The ninkyō dantai do not take kindly to those who dishonor their profession. Minako is a woman, and she is powerful, and she is not well-loved by several families for it. I am not well-loved for other reasons.”

“Me,” Viktor murmured, and there was not pride, nor gloating, in it. The statement simply was, and Yuuri found himself nodding along.

He had nearly forgotten the attempt on his life in Fuchū, so preoccupied he had been with that which happened before. Now it came back to him, but it did not disturb the numbness that had taken hold first. The effect was rather like a film rewind of one of the top ten most terrifying moments of Yuuri’s life, and he was simply a spectator to it all.

He had not been in solitary confinement, to start. This had come after, after the attempt on his life and after the guard and after Yuuri threatened to off himself in his shared cell and rob Tokyo of its grand celebrity execution years too soon if they did not guard his neck better.

It had been nighttime. His cellmate had been a conspirator, and had provided them with vital information on Katsuki Yuuri’s sleep habits. More concisely, he had informed on the night terrors, the paralysis, the way Yuuri did not wake for anything once sleep gripped him.

He did not confide in them that all of this information was fabricated, nor than Yuuri slept with a shiv fashioned from a metal heating grate in the communal bathroom beneath his pillow. He did not know either of these things.

Four men, two of them yakuza much older than Yuuri, one well-armed prison guard and his cellmate, had tried to smother him in his sleep. When this did not work, they had tried to knife him. Vaguely, Yuuri remembered a lot of blood--most of it his own--in the beginning. Three long slashes to the back, each one narrowly missing death blows to the spinal cord by fractional centimeters. A deep cut to the shoulder. A shallow nick beneath his chin. All were marks he now bore from men who should rightfully have been his subordinates, in another life.

“Did you kill them?” Viktor murmured now, in the present. Yuuri blinked. Remembered himself.

“Only one.” The prison guard had not been a fighter, not like the rest of the ninkyō dantai. He had been an easy kill, stupid enough to conspire with yakuza, stupid enough to put his hands on Katsuki Yuuri and expect to come out of the fight alive. Yuuri had broken his neck. “But I remember names.”

Fuchū uniforms bore inmate names rather than the anonymous serial numbers typical of other prisons, and Yuuri would always remember their names. Tetsuya Takahashi. Kawana Tengo. Fukada Tamotsu.

The sound of a struggle had brought guards, non-conspiring ones, to the scene just in time to save Yuuri’s life. He had lost a lot of blood by then, was losing more as injury made his movements slow and his thoughts lag. Tetsuya had just put the knife to his throat as his saviors arrived, and Yuuri had never been so pleased to see Fuchū staff in his lifetime.

Not that they'd done much, but their presence was enough. The rest of the yakuza had fled, like roaches when one suddenly turned on a light, and Yuuri had been alone in his cell with the dead guard too suddenly. The floor was slick with his own blood. Yuuri remembered this quite well.

He also remembered trying to smirk, but the action was exhausting, and trying laboriously to think of something witty to say, but the concept was impossible, and he remembered noting casually to himself that three yakuza and a prison guard had done a better job at fucking him up than the entire Plisetsky family had, and in much less time. It was admirable, he thought. A testament to ninkyō dantai efficiency.

The guards had made him put his hands on his head, and the world had spun. When they ordered him to kneel, Yuuri realized he would not remain conscious for much longer. His surroundings were soft and muted and the pain in his back much too subtle for consciousness.

“Keep me alive,” he remembered saying, though not the decision to say it. “Please. Keep me alive.”

And then he'd passed out, face first in a pool of his own blackened blood. And the knife wounds had scarred, become ugly relics of things Yuuri would rather forget.

Viktor Nikiforov laughed, and Yuuri realized with some embarrassment that he was still not dressed. His shirt was only halfway buttoned. The jacket was still crumpled in his hands. Hastily, he closed the shirt. Shrugged the jacket over his shoulders, as if it made him less transparent.

“You're an incredible creature,” Viktor remarked quietly. “I remember now.”

“I don't know how you could ever have forgotten,” Yuuri replied tightly, and Viktor shook his head.

“No. Me neither.”

And this, too, was suffocating to Yuuri. He shook his head to dispel the fog. Carded a hand through his hair, which needed another cut. He lamented the fact that he would probably have to do it himself again. He did not trust Viktor anywhere near him with a straight razor, and he doubted Georgi Popovich’s intentions nearly as much. Minako had taught him well, and he retained enough to know that even sitting for a haircut made him vulnerable now. The usual methods of obtaining one would not suit him anymore.

The Plisetsky family was fascinatingly tight-knit. Outsiders were not employed to perform tasks that insiders were capable of doing. It was safer that way, and easier. Giacometti did finances, but he also fixed Viktor’s face when he got blackout drunk and tripped down the stairs on his birthday, and restarted Yuuri’s heart when he overdosed on ketamine, and performed all manner of other minor tasks that they could not trust Russian doctors to do. Popovich was an art thief, but he was also the standing authority on bespoke suit fittings and appearances and other things Yuuri had never given a fuck about before Viktor. Babicheva was first and foremost a fighter, but she did a bit of everything when required. Feltsman and Baranovskaya were teachers, advisors, puppeteers, replacement parents, et cetera. And Viktor Nikiforov was Bratva prince and pretty boy mascot and executive decision maker all in one.

Katsuki Yuuri realized now that he had been the exception to, and thus the reason for, this no-outsiders rule. He had been the first Okukawa delegate to another family since the beginning of Minako’s reign, and the last. The end of Plisetsky isolation, and the beginning again. How lovely and ouroboric of him. Ruining them all was almost worth his own ruination.

Almost.

Fully and appropriately dressed now, Yuuri spread his hands. “Am I respectable now?”

Viktor Nikiforov surveyed him for too long. His expression was unabashedly appreciative, and Yuuri did not like what it promised.

_I’ll have you beg for me again, Katsuki Yuuri._

Then, curtly, Viktor nodded. Stepped back from the doorway into the hall, and dipped his head in what could not quite bother itself to be a bow but which could be mistaken for an attempt at nothing else. It was a damningly Yuuri-esque move, this disrespect disguised as deference. Yuuri could not tell if Viktor was mocking him, or if he was simply performing a familiar action whose origins he could not remember.

Reluctantly, Yuuri followed him. Viktor walked too closely, too comfortably, and on the front doorstep before the first wrought iron gate he turned to Yuuri and remarked companionably, “You're in desperate need of a haircut, aren't you?”

And to this, Katsuki Yuuri said nothing.

* * *

 

 _"Understand,”_ Viktor Nikiforov read, _“that it is not love.”_

His fingers had not disentangled from Yuuri’s, nor had Yuuri bothered to remove his hand from its place tucked beneath his chin. Thus they were pulse on pulse like this, with Viktor’s wrist laid gently beneath Yuuri’s jaw. Blood beating in time, rhythm derived from a mess of two bodies, bodies between which Yuuri had ceased to differentiate what was his and what was Viktor’s by now.

 _“I've been in love, but this is not the same.”_ Viktor thought him still asleep; this was obvious. His reading voice had slipped several decibels below what it had been at the start, and simple reverence had given way to awe. Yuuri was not vain enough to ascribe the reason for this awe to himself, but he was infatuated enough to be pleased with his proximity to it. To hope for its longevity, and so he did not speak. He let Viktor believe him asleep in his lap.

Yuuri did wonder briefly why he continued reading to a sleeping room. Then he wondered why the thought of Viktor sharing this with him, even believing him unable to appreciate it, was so wonderful to him. Perhaps because he had not had something like this sleepy trust since he was very, very young.

 _“This is not my feeling, but some external force taking possession of me.”_ Gently, Viktor began to separate their fingers. It was slow going, for he was clearly doing his best not to disturb Yuuri in the process, and a deliriously in-love part of Yuuri’s brain was making Yuuri tighten his grip imperceptibly, to prolong the contact. Above him, Viktor’s voice sounded like he was smiling.

He succeeded in unwinding their hands, much to Yuuri’s distress, and he continued his reading in the same dreamy affectation he had used since Yuuri had fallen to pieces in his lap. It was a lovely sort of voice.

 _“I left because I decided it could not be, you understand, like a happiness that doesn't exist on earth...”_ And now his hand sought new and old wonders in the lines of Yuuri’s face, and it was harder to feign sleep like this. Yuuri was not a bad liar, but he had never been a fantastic one either. He wanted this too much to lie about it.

Viktor Nikiforov touched him and the world ended, and Yuuri wondered if that was what it meant to worship someone. To have the world stop, crumble, reassemble itself at another person’s behest. To tremble while his hands memorized the outlines of his face, because he thought him asleep and wished to know him better in his vulnerability just as much as in his power.

Katsuki Yuuri wanted to be known. He had never experienced this sort of desire before.

 _“...But I have struggled with myself and I see that without it there is no life.”_ Fingertips lingering on the edges of his mouth cast Yuuri into agony, and he could not help anymore but let his lips part and take Viktor’s fingers into his mouth. The sound of gentle, pleasant surprise Viktor made above him was worth the new heat to Yuuri’s cheeks, would be worth it forever.

“Oh,” Viktor Nikiforov murmured, as Yuuri pushed himself up drowsily on his elbows and began a line of kisses upwards past his palm and his wrist, then forsook the rest of him in favor of his mouth on his bare throat.

And for the first time since Yuuri had taken up the profession of sex, there was nothing hurried about the process. _Hungry_ , yes, because Yuuri was starved for touch and affection and another’s appreciation of his body, and he would happily devour Viktor Nikiforov right here in order to satiate that hunger. But he did not rush this, did not demand from Viktor a fraction more than he was willing to give. This was on Viktor’s terms, because Katsuki Yuuri had lead him before and found that Viktor’s body sang best when he was allowed to set the tone, the pace, the rhythm of it all.

For Viktor Nikiforov became a fragile thing in Katsuki Yuuri’s hands. This, too, was trust. Where Yuuri had trusted Viktor enough to sleep in his lap, to let him touch him when Yuuri was too drowsy to possibly defend himself if the need arose, Viktor Nikiforov shrank to much less than the scourge of his city beneath Katsuki Yuuri. He was not a plague nor a curse nor a god or devil of any kind--he was merely twenty-four and breakable and loveliest in the light of his sleepy sex confessions.

Yuuri worked his mouth over the skin above his collar, and young, human Viktor cast his head back and laughed quietly. It was a desperate sort of laugh, and it slid quite wonderfully into a whine when Yuuri’s hands moved independently of one another, one to tangle in his hair and the other sliding along the innermost part of his thigh, just slowly, slowly, slowly enough to make him beg.

Yuuri liked it when Viktor Nikiforov begged.

 _“Yuuri--”_ But he said nothing else, could manage nothing else, and Yuuri gently took the translation of Viktor’s wants and needs into his own hands.

“Is this okay? You’re sure?” Yuuri murmured against his throat, because if Viktor was not sure he would stop. Unquestioningly. He would not lead Viktor into anything he did not understand or desire wholeheartedly, would not coax him into anything he would come to regret. Viktor was still young, and Yuuri younger, but Yuuri had years of training for this type of thing which Viktor lacked. To consider the two of them equal students in respect to sex was inaccurate, and Yuuri was very conscious of both his own experience as well as the danger of subconsciously turning Nikiforov into a job. He would not insult him so. “You're absolutely sure?”

“I’m sure,” Viktor gasped, and in response Yuuri tightened his grip on the inside of his thigh and drew a lovely moan out of him. “I'm sure, I'm _sure--”_

“I understood the first time,” Yuuri murmured, but it was amused and not cruel. Viktor laughed softly. Yuuri drew the back of his hand along Viktor’s jaw, and the other man closed his eyes, followed the action rapturously with a dip of his head. “If you change your mind, you’ll tell me immediately, yes? If I do something you don't like, you will tell me?”

“You could _never--”_ Viktor gasped, and Yuuri shook his head softly.

“This is yours,” he murmured. His own breathing had become labored by this time, and his body responded just as musically to Viktor’s touch as his to Yuuri’s. Viktor pulled Yuuri against him fiercely, so he was not sitting in his lap any longer but straddling his thighs, flush against his chest. Yuuri gasped. “It will-- _always_ \--be yours, Vitya. On your terms.”

“I _worship_ you, Katsuki Yuuri.”

Yuuri closed his eyes and kissed him, as softly as he could manage like this, and let Nikiforov take the reins. He would yield to Yuuri when he became less comfortable with his prowess, Yuuri knew from experience (not that he thought Viktor had anything to be ashamed of in respect to his talents), but he liked this small admission of control. Yuuri would not deny him it.

He bent willingly underneath the kiss, Nikiforov turning what had been inflexible desire into willowy submission with a few expert touches. Yuuri arched his back, and Viktor leaned with him, supporting Yuuri’s weight with a hand between his shoulder blades while his other hand sought how to best coax an admission of pleasure out of him. He found his answer in the space between his thighs, and Yuuri moaned against his mouth, and Viktor must have been suitably pleased with his success, for he smiled against his lips. Yuuri found this unbearable in the best way.

“I love you,” he panted, but it was not in any language Viktor would fathom, and so he tried again. It took a concentrated effort to remember Russian like this, but he managed. Pressed the confessions to Viktor Nikiforov’s skin as lightly, as quietly, as possible. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“I understood the first time,” Viktor whispered, and Yuuri was too far in ecstasy to be suitably shocked by his understanding of informal Japanese, and he merely tipped back his head and let his eyes close as his thighs tightened around Viktor's waist. A typical Yuuri move, since their first encounter, and yet it never failed to inspire in Viktor Nikiforov all types of carnal desires.

They were one being in two bodies, synchronic in everything they did, at once both yielding and domineering, and there was no need to verbalize what Viktor wanted next for Yuuri to understand. Viktor did anyway.

“Bedroom,” he managed, the word catching pleasurably in his throat. Yuuri had his arms thrown about his shoulders, was whispering further confessions and new pleas along his neck--creative variations on _I love you_ and entreaties for Viktor to fuck him right here to the memory of _Anna Karenina_ narrated to sunlight and silence, sacrilege to the library be damned--and at this demand Yuuri hummed a happy note along the curve of his jaw.

“We can do it here,” he murmured, not sleepy but heavy all the same. “Do the doors lock?”

Viktor laughed, and Yuuri closed his eyes and basked in the sound. “We’re not fucking in the library,” Viktor panted. “Lilia would kill me.”

“I suppose,” Yuuri agreed disappointedly. “Though I have no idea why it's Lilia’s business--”

“Yuuri.” A plea, a reminder, a gentle admonishment that discussing Lilia Baranovskaya really was not the ideal course of action at the moment. His mouth was beautiful turned down in petulance, but Yuuri preferred it other ways. He shifted his position in his lap so that his legs were more reliably locked above his hips, and Viktor Nikiforov’s breath hitched in his throat and his gaze became wonderfully unfocused.

“Mm,” Yuuri replied vaguely, as Viktor’s mouth formed silent invocations to saints to whom he had never prayed before. There was nothing like all-encompassing desire to inspire worship. “Bedroom it is. Carry me there?”

Viktor did, gladly.

* * *

 

Yuuri still hated the Camaro with a passion.

Viktor drove like a typical Russian, which meant badly and with little regard for his own life or those of his passengers, and Yuuri hated that too.

 _“Christ,”_ he snapped as they slid around a sharp corner much too fast, and Viktor looked to him with amusement. “At least wait to kill me until you have an audience, Nikiforov.”

And like that, the amusement dropped from Viktor’s face. He scowled. Took the next turn equally poorly, just to prove that he would not heed orders from Katsuki Yuuri anymore. The twist to his mouth was petulance second only to a clearly articulated _make me._

How childish. Yuuri rolled his eyes.

Viktor Nikiforov could not have both. Either he and Yuuri were enemies or they were allies, but he could not threaten to kill Yuuri and then tease him in the same breath. Yuuri would not stand to be mocked so.

And since there was no chance of them ever being allies again, there would be no camaraderie, no jests, no touching. Viktor had always had a particular problem with avoiding the latter of their new forbidden methods of communication, and so Yuuri kept the switchblade on him at all times now. Lest he need a reminder.

Breakfast was at a Plisetsky-owned mafia club which was not open to the public during daylight hours. Yuuri vaguely remembered it as the site where he had first gotten drunk with Viktor Nikiforov in audience, but he remembered little else but that. Perhaps that was for the best, since by the way Nikiforov was looking at him in thinly veiled disappointment, he had clearly hoped to inspire more than this simple indifference. Yuuri would not give him the satisfaction. He raised his eyebrows.

At this, Viktor Nikiforov frowned more deeply. Yuuri wondered when his face would finally begin to show signs of this apparent chronic unhappiness. The idea of twenty-nine-year-old Viktor with worn edges and ragged frown lines was strangely vindicating.

“Scowling ages you,” Yuuri remarked helpfully, and Viktor looked briefly admonished. He blinked. Then he smiled, too saccharinely. Yuuri flinched on instinct, before the words even left his mouth.

“Get the fuck out of my car.” And they proved to be relatively harmless, which made Yuuri’s reaction to them all the more humiliating. He obeyed--too quickly for pride--to disguise the flush to his cheeks. Viktor noticed regardless, Yuuri knew, by the satisfied shift in his demeanor and the brief victory that flashed in his eyes, but he did not comment on it.

He made to touch him as they entered, a light hand at his back which was probably nothing but an unconscious habit but which Yuuri found distasteful all the same. He gave Viktor a scathing look and side-stepped the contact, and Viktor nodded. Like he understood. Like he respected the reaction. Like he was almost disappointed, but never surprised.

“Mister Nikiforov,” a woman bearing a case of cabernet sauvignon greeted warmly, and her eyes slid over Yuuri like he was not even there. Infuriating. “No Christophe today?”

“He’s out of town.” Viktor’s response was absentminded, like he could not be damned to reciprocate the common courtesy of small talk. It was unlike him, and this was how Yuuri knew that Viktor was unsteady again. Even on his own ground, in his own city, Viktor Nikiforov was slightly more manageable without Christophe Giacometti to guide him in his power. “It's just the two of us today.”

“The two of you,” the woman hummed easily, and then she looked at Yuuri and registered his identity finally, and the case slipped from her hands to the floor before her shoes, and a deep, deep red began to seep out from the bottom of the case. “Mister Katsuki.”

Yuuri nodded his greeting and then let his attention drift above her carelessly. It was not so much that he could not be damned to reciprocate small talk either, but that the very thought of being alive again to those who were not of the Plisetsky inner circle was suddenly exhausting. All it would bring him was the necessity of more false appearances now, until he reclaimed his autonomy permanently.

Viktor led him to a balcony which stretched over the main stage, gestured for him to sit at a table. Yuuri did not.

“What do you hope to accomplish with this?” he demanded, and Viktor shrugged like it mattered not to him whether Yuuri stood the entire time just to prove his point, and took his own seat.

“I want to talk business with you, Katsuki,” he said indifferently. The words, though not the tone, were familiar. Yuuri remembered vaguely the same phrase six years prior, in this same club, though it had been sloppily endowed with inebriation at the time, and been accompanied by a dizzingly tipsy smile that had torn Katsuki Yuuri to pieces. He had not even been drunk himself yet.

 _Business_. Business had meant a different thing back then, Yuuri remembered. The connotation was more that of sharp mouths and cocaine highs and long fingers tapping lightly against his throat than it was of any type of professional affairs Yuuri could have imagined. The business Viktor Nikiforov had spoken of back then was distinctly non-businesslike.

Yuuri hoped today would not revisit these topics of discussion.

Reluctantly, Yuuri sat. He tried for a disdainful elegance as he did so, and was marginally successful. “Then talk.”

Viktor waved a club server over and ordered Yuuri’s breakfast without bothering to look at any sort of menu, nor to ask his opinion on his selections. He did not take his eyes off of Yuuri’s face for a moment. When the server had scurried away, casting a final panicked look at Yuuri before he did so, Viktor spoke again.

“I want you to attend the gala this month. As my guest.”

“Your guest,” Yuuri repeated. “And not your employee?”

“Well, I’m not going to _pay_ you for the pleasure of my company, if that's what you're suggesting,” Viktor drawled. “So yes, as my guest.”

“Why?” It was too abruptly phrased to be calculated. Yuuri clenched his teeth at this further confession to human uncertainty.

Viktor smiled. Satisfied. “I want to remind you that you’re still beautiful, Katsuki Yuuri, no matter how you try to pretend you do not care for my opinion of that fact.”

“I assure you that I don’t.”

“I seem to remember you being a better liar than this.” His hands folded beneath his chin. There were no gloves today. The June heat was finally setting in, and the elements were forcing Viktor to abandon his aesthetics in favor of personal comfort. Apparently even the Devil of Saint Petersburg bowed to nature on occasion. “Should I be flattered, that you can no longer lie to me?”

“It's an anatomical wonder how you can never seem to get off your own dick, Nikiforov,” Yuuri snapped, and Viktor looked unsuitably delighted.

 _“God_ , you're wonderful,” he said in fascination. “But that's not the particular type of business I want to discuss.”

 _Relief_. To disguise its broadcasting plain on his face, Yuuri spread his hands and pitched his tone for unconvincing civility. “Then let's discuss other things.”

The server returned with Irish coffees, and Yuuri did not care for Viktor assuming he entertained a habit of day drinking. Maybe it had been factual when he was twenty-two and consistently looking for more hedonistic ways to ruin his own life, but now Yuuri did his best to avoid anything clear which made him confess to damning things. And he liked neither coffee nor whiskey anyway.

“I don't suppose you are familiar with Grigory Beskudnikov’s work?” Viktor asked him, and Yuuri shook his head tersely.

“No, I wouldn't think so. He's a Kremlin lackey, and also my new informant on criminal affairs in the Russian government. Since the unfortunate falling out with my last informants.” This last was spoken with a tight smile, and Yuuri was somewhat pleased to see that his impromptu purging of the Plisetsky ranks still irritated Viktor. It had been a necessary course of action at the time, but Yuuri taking the matter into his own hands had been a subject of disagreement between the two of them. Viktor did not appreciate the flouting of his orders.

“And why should he be important to me?” Yuuri drawled. He drew the coffee towards himself, then reconsidered and pushed it back to Viktor. Folded his hand and assumed an expectant expression. Viktor blinked at him, amused, and then he raised the cup in a toast to Katsuki Yuuri and drank from it. There was little hesitation at all in the action, and Yuuri almost found this comforting.

“I wouldn't poison you alone, Yuuri,” Viktor was saying, as he slid the drink gently back within Yuuri’s reach. “You said it yourself: why would I ever do anything to you without an audience?”

“There’s no fault in being careful,” Yuuri replied, but Viktor’s qualifying statements had withered his sense of ease. He closed his eyes briefly. This was danger like he’d never been dealt before. He did not know what moves would put him on top and what would kill him anymore.

Viktor Nikiforov smiled. As if he knew. As if he appreciated this gently suffocating panic from which Yuuri so clearly suffered. As if he had the upper hand, was on top and would continue to be indefinitely, and knew it.

“Of course not,” he agreed. “But don't be so careful you miss out on all the fun, Yuuri.” His own hand drifted too close to where Yuuri’s wrists were pressed flat and militantly immobile to the table. Quietly, Yuuri withdrew them to his lap.

Viktor Nikiforov looked insufferably pleased at this forfeiture. “I can't decide how I like having you best, Katsuki Yuuri,” he murmured. “But you are fascinating when you're afraid of me, aren't you?”

“You won't have me in any way,” Yuuri spat, “so I can't possibly fathom why it _matters.”_

And Viktor surveyed him quietly, lifted his chin to reveal a pale throat in which Yuuri could easily pick out his pulse beneath his jawline. It was the only proof that Viktor was a living, human creature. He said, “I’ll have you in any way I like. You’ll give yourself to me in due time, Katsuki Yuuri.”

Yuuri stood from the table and made to leave. He was fucking _furious_. Viktor had no _right_ to speak to him this way, to continue to insinuate that Yuuri valued mediocre dick over his own life. He was damned tired of people calling him a slut for the unabashed way he had previously loved Viktor Nikiforov. He was damned tired of every single one of his actions being interpreted as lust for the Devil of Saint Petersburg again.

It could not be further from the truth. Yuuri intended to be the end of Viktor Nikiforov, not the other way around, and he would not sacrifice himself again for another moment in Viktor’s bed. That was Viktor’s prophesied fate. Katsuki Yuuri had already paid his dues to the devil in loving such a monster, and now it would be Nikiforov’s turn. These rise and falls of empires were always viciously ouroboric.

Cool fingers around his wrist prevented him from storming off, and Yuuri tried snatching his hand back to no avail. Viktor was deceptively strong. Yuuri would not humiliate himself in a further struggle.

“Let go of me,” he whispered. He was horrified to discover that his voice would pitch no louder. What had been intended as dangerous control was nothing but thinly veiled panic now.

Viktor turned Yuuri’s hand over and upwards calmly, and the rushing in Yuuri’s ears was his own blood beating frantically in his arteries. He shuddered visibly when Viktor traced the lines in his palm, clenched his teeth when the touch bled to his wrist and beneath his shirt cuff to trace the memorized lines of ink there.

 _“Mne otmshcheniye,”_ Viktor promised reverently, _“i Az vozdam.”_

“Like _hell_ you will,” Yuuri spat, and he wrenched back his own hand and pulled it against his chest to keep from striking him. He was still too terrified of repercussions to touch him, even if Viktor obviously had no such qualms about heeding his own rules anymore. “I’m going to wait outside. Please take your time.” He couldn't stand to look at him anymore. “Maybe fuck off and die, while you're at it.”

“You sound like Yura,” Viktor laughed. The action was entirely too carefree. “He always wanted so desperately to be like you.”

“You couldn't handle one of me, Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri said measuredly. He drew himself up to his full height. It was less than Viktor’s admittedly, but the straightness of his spine and the ability to finally look down on Viktor Nikiforov, seated as he was, was empowering nonetheless. “Be thankful there are not two.”

 _Vengeance is mine,_ Viktor had recited, _and I will repay._

Like hell. Yuuri would not permit it.

“I would not wish for it,” Viktor Nikiforov smiled. “You’re one of a kind, Katsuki Yuuri.”

And thusly, Yuuri turned on his heel and left. He had withdrawn a reasonable distance before he began trembling so violently that he could not bear to stand any longer, and he slid to the floor when he was sure no one was watching.

Viktor would never know of this admission to weakness. Yuuri was careful of such things. And, for the briefest time, the universe was uncharacteristically merciful in this respect.

* * *

 

Yuuri took his time fucking all the sense out of Viktor Nikiforov.

It was a lovely thing, to undo him with such finality. Viktor was no blushing virgin, had never been in the long year that Yuuri had known him, and yet he could be reduced to so little when Yuuri put his hands on him.

“I love you,” he avowed desperately, over and over and over again as Yuuri gripped him around the waist and pulled him flush against him. Unbuttoned his collar, undid his trousers, pushed him back against the bedroom wall and stripped the fabric from his shoulders and his hips. _“God._ I love you.”

“You're so easily impressed,” Yuuri laughed, and Viktor smiled beatifically.

“I can’t help that you’re so damned impressive,” he replied, and his expression promptly lost all its sharpness as Yuuri drew his hands down his chest and over the line of his hips when Yuuri went to his knees.

He mimicked his previous course of action with his mouth now, plotting a series of softly possessive kisses along the curve of his inner thigh. Above him, Viktor tipped his head back rapturously against the wall. Yuuri knew from experience that Viktor would do anything for him in this moment, say anything to please him, and rather than use such power to push him onto the bed and rush the process of taking Viktor Nikiforov to pieces, Yuuri sat back on his heels and gently tipped up his gaze.

“Tell me what you want,” he entreated softly. “Tell me exactly what you want, Vitya, and I’ll give it to you.”

Viktor’s expression was suitably hazy: lips bitten pink and barely parted, cheeks flushed scarlet, pupils blown wide already. This was hardly a testament to Yuuri’s talent. Viktor Nikiforov was simply very easy to please when he was in love.

And he was beautiful, so beautiful it put a physical ache in Yuuri’s chest. This was no one-sided thrall under which he had placed the most powerful twenty-four-year-old in the world; Yuuri was just as infatuated with Viktor Nikiforov as the latter was with Katsuki Yuuri. But where Yuuri demonstrated his affection in sleepy Japanese confessions and gentle kisses and slow conquest from a submissive place on his knees, Viktor Nikiforov communicated his in books and sighs and rough hands pulling Yuuri to his feet to remove his clothing as immediately as possible.

“I want everything,” Viktor murmured, and a seam in Yuuri’s shirt protested valiantly and then tore in his hands. Yuuri didn't care. “I want everything you have.”

“I’ll give it,” Yuuri gasped, and then folded to Viktor’s own lovingly practiced methods of making him forget his own damned name. Such methods involved parting his legs, hooking his fingers underneath his thighs, hoisting him upwards and against his chest so that when Yuuri wrapped his arms around his neck and Viktor laid him adoringly across the bed, Yuuri pulled Viktor with him and on top of him. Viktor’s fingers slid up his thighs to gently snag around the waistband of his boxers and remove them, and Katsuki Yuuri arched his back in concert with the pleasure of his hands on him. His voice was thick with a dying accent now, and when he spat Viktor’s name and a desperate demand to _just let him fuck him_ already, the entreaty was in more Japanese than Russian.

Viktor laughed softly, the sound deliciously far back in his throat, and Yuuri whined as his hands slowly worked him hard enough for sex. His own mouth was viciously busy at Viktor’s throat, but the first briefest moment of hesitation allowed for Yuuri to catch him around the waist and flip Viktor onto his front, to wrest Yuuri’s own power over Viktor Nikiforov back as succinctly as possible by running his tongue and his teeth down the neverending line of vertebrae in Viktor’s spine. Viktor gasped, and the gasp crescendoed to a lovely cry as Yuuri eased into him slowly slowly slowly, and Katsuki Yuuri murmured gentle reassurances into the curve between his throat and his jaw. Viktor Nikiforov shook beneath him.

“You’re incredible,” Yuuri whispered, and Viktor panted out a dazed laugh. “I mean it. You're wonderful, Vitya.”

“I love you,” Viktor confessed artlessly, his expression hazy in its rapture, and he gave in easily and let Katsuki Yuuri have his slow, gentle way with him. Yuuri found this yielding entirely to his own whim so incredibly trusting that it made sincere emotion catch in his throat, and he reciprocated the confession equally artlessly.

“I love you too,” he promised, again and again, confessing it against his slick neck and the trembling powerful muscles in his shoulders and the beautiful convulsive curve to his spine, and it was the truest thing that had ever been whispered in a dark room under the heavy influence of sex. It was the truest thing that Katsuki Yuuri had ever said, and especially in a life built on lies the distinction was impressive. Yuuri was not used to baring the truth so readily, not for Minako and not for Yuko and not for himself. But he would do so for Viktor Nikiforov, any day.

“Tell me how that feels,” he murmured, his hand slipping from a steady bracing against Viktor’s shoulder around his waist, stroking the curve of his hip until Viktor whispered Yuuri’s name into the sheets in a desperate type of plea. Yuuri followed the slope of his body, taking his cock gently in his hand, and Viktor pushed against him in what was certainly an involuntary, unconscious need. “Is this okay?”

Viktor laughed, breathlessly, and Yuuri suddenly loved that about him. He was what Yuuri aspired to be: never vulnerable unless he wanted to be, and when he was, always pointedly aware of the power balance between him and others. Viktor Nikiforov did not let just anyone fuck him the way he let Yuuri, did not yield like this to any casual partner he’d had. This and this and _this_ , the gasped confessions and the breathy laughter and the agonizing submission beneath him--it was all trust on Viktor Nikiforov’s behalf, because he may be gloriously undone but he was still calculating even now.

Yuuri knew this as he knew that if Viktor did not want Yuuri to see him this way, then he never would have. Viktor was a strategist first and foremost, and humanity came as an afterthought to the more pressing matters of advantage and public appearance and power plays. This was trust, and a reminder that Yuuri held something incorruptible and priceless in his hands when he held this incarnation of Viktor Nikiforov. This was Viktor Nikiforov as he would be, were he not the orphaned child of a damned city raised on a fortune of coke and diamonds, had he not been tithed to Nikolai Plisetsky when he was fifteen and groomed to be the heir of an entire continent’s underground riches.

Katsuki Yuuri had seen him like this on many more occasions than he could count, and still each vision was just as divine as the last. And Yuuri did love having Viktor when he was deadly, but there was a special type of pleasure in taking him like this.

“Viktor,” he repeated. “Is this okay?” And now Yuuri hesitated at the lack of response, drawing his hand back carefully, when Viktor swore too quietly for Yuuri to understand. “Do you want me to--”

“Yes,” Viktor gasped, as Yuuri took up his previous business of running his teeth and tongue against Viktor’s spine. Viktor arched his back violently as Yuuri did so, swore again thickly into the sheets. “Yes, yes, of _course--”_

“How is this?” Yuuri murmured, moving on again. There was so much of Viktor’s body that he had yet to appreciate, and Yuuri had admirable stamina but he would not last long enough to give every centimeter of him the adoration it deserved. He would have to cover what he could, and promise the rest satisfaction at a later date.

 _“Perfect,”_ Viktor vowed as Yuuri’s hand revisited his cock, and there was desperation down to the very bones of the word. Yuuri closed his eyes, and when Viktor turned his face and sought out his jawline, the feeling of his hot mouth on his skin was divine. Yuuri was remarkably easy when it came to Nikiforov, but curiously, it was not something he believed of which he could ever be ashamed.

If being happy also meant reducing himself to an ordinary man in Viktor Nikiforov’s hands, Yuuri would gladly give up the years of Minako’s training which had made him exceptional to have him. If all happy families were alike, boring in their simplicity, Yuuri would be as simple as he needed to be to keep this small, wondrous family. He promised it to himself at the height of this private ecstasy, and the vow burned itself into the palms of his hands as they seized Viktor’s hips and yanked them against his own one last time.

Cognizant of what Viktor had been promised, Yuuri gave him everything he had, and when he had finished he ensured that Viktor had too before he slipped out of bed to discard the condom and clean his hands and stare uncomprehendingly at the dizzingly earnest teenager’s face in the bathroom mirror for several seconds too long. He was still running high on endorphins, his eyes wide and black black black like they were when he did too much coke too fast, and he had to steady himself against the sink as he evaluated the implications of it all.

He was in love with Viktor Nikiforov, and it was a love of which he had never believed himself capable before. Katsuki Yuuri was so far gone that he did not even mind that the man a few meters outside the shut bathroom door could seduce him into hell and back with naught but a few words, if he so wished.

What was particularly damning was the realization that Yuuri was willing to waltz into hell for him without Viktor ever even asking, just to prove he would. This desire was dangerous. This was what Minako had advised against when she said no attachments and no entanglements, and here Yuuri was now. Foolishly attached, and irrevocably entangled.

But also slipping too quickly into sleepiness to want to waste more time contemplating how he had fucked himself over so willfully anymore, and so Yuuri uncurled his fingers from around the sink basin and forced himself to turn his back on the traitorously truthful mirror and retire back to the bedroom. He decided firmly that would not let Okukawa Minako ruin this for him now, that he would wait until the morning to conjure up a solution to breaking her most important rule, and that he would think of nothing but Viktor Nikiforov for the rest of the night. Consequences be damned.

Viktor hummed drowsily as Yuuri slipped back beneath the sheets and tucked himself gently against his back, and he sighed when Yuuri tipped up his chin and pressed his lips into his messy silvery hair. His heartbeat was slowing as he yielded to sleep, and Yuuri sought this proof of his existence with his own hand too desperately to be casual. Too desperately to go unnoticed.

“Don’t worry,” Viktor murmured, and the consolation took Yuuri by gentle surprise. “I’m still here.” It was wondrous--and terrifying too--how transparent Yuuri was to him. Yuuri was known, finally.

He had never been known like this before.

“I wondered,” Yuuri confessed softly, too earnestly, but he pointedly did not care, “I wondered if--if you were real at all.”

“Mm.” There was an obvious smile to the sound. “As far as I know, I am.” Drowsily, Viktor’s fingers curled around Yuuri’s hand that rested against his heart, and Yuuri was glad for this secondary reassurance. “Though you have a wonderful talent for making me unsure of that fact, Katsuki Yuuri.”

Yuuri murmured into his hair, “I do my best,” and Viktor sounded senselessly pleased.

“I know you do.” His hand brought Yuuri’s carefully to his mouth, and he pressed a soundless kiss to his palm, then curled his fingers over the affected skin and kissed each one of his calloused knuckles too. “And I…” A sleepy sigh obstructed the statement briefly. “I do...appreciate it.”

“Earlier,” Yuuri said, and he did not know why he spoke because he was so exhausted and roundly satisfied that he rightfully should have just gone to sleep grateful for what he had already had tonight. Hubris was what made him push his luck. “Earlier, you understood…”

“I’ve been trying to learn,” Viktor whispered against his curled fingers. Yuuri shivered to feel his lips against his skin again. “To surprise you.”

“Oh.” _Oh._

So this was what it was like to be known.

“You could have asked me to help,” he said softly. “I would...gladly...” But he faltered, because that was not the point. The point was that Viktor had taken it upon himself to begin learning Japanese, without informing Yuuri, with the intentions of surprising him. With the intentions of making him happy.

“I love you,” he sighed instead, and Viktor laughed.

“You've mentioned that a few times.”

“Mmm. Have I?”

“Just a few,” Viktor mumbled, gloriously unmade. Yuuri had fucked all pretense and poise out of him, and the results of such a feat was a deliriously beautiful creature. Viktor had spoken before of seeing Katsuki Yuuri unmasked, the first time they had slept together, but Yuuri had not known exactly what he meant when he said it was a divine thing to witness. Not until this moment.

“I promise you,” Yuuri whispered, and he realized dimly that Viktor’s shoulders rose and fell with a gentler rhythm now. He was asleep, but still lightly enough that Yuuri’s fingers stroking his cheek drew a wordless sigh from him. Yuuri was elated to be trusted with such vulnerability once again. Nothing would ever be as important to him as this quiet faith Viktor Nikiforov placed in him; he was certain of it. “However maybe times I say it, it will never be enough, Viktor. I promise you.”

And it wouldn't. There was too little time in even an average lifespan to fill it all with an accurate demonstration of how he loved Nikiforov, and Yuuri knew he and Viktor would not likely live even that long. They would both be lucky to make it to thirty years of age, given the violence inherent in their profession, and Yuuri simply would have to do his best to make those remaining six years memorable.

But he could do so. He would do so. He owed it to Viktor, who had shared his bed and his life and his soul with Katsuki Yuuri in this naked way, to bring such an earnest vow as this to fruition. And he owed it to himself also to make such a disastrous mistake as he had made in loving Viktor Nikiforov worth his own while.

_Understand that this is not love._

But it _was_. It was, it was, it _was_ , and Yuuri would unmake himself and his legacy and the entire damned world for this type of love, if the need arose.

He felt unyielding sleep curl around his shoulders, take gentle hold of his thoughts, and before Yuuri submitted to its demands he pressed this vow too into Viktor Nikiforov’s spine.

_I’ll give you everything I have, Viktor Nikiforov. I promise you that._

* * *

 

The drive home was silent, stifling, and Viktor’s insistence on taking up as much of Katsuki Yuuri’s personal space as possible was growing old.

At one point he leaned too far into the passenger side to retrieve something off the dash, brushing Yuuri’s arm purposefully as he did so, and Yuuri spat, “Do that again and you won't keep your hands.”

Viktor leveled his gaze at him, and he looked devastatingly unimpressed. “Don't be dramatic, Yuuri.” Though the words were nonchalant, his tone was far from the same. But Yuuri was exhausted with his games. Katsuki Yuuri was not prey to be toyed with, and if Nikiforov thought himself a predator ranked higher in this ecosystem than Katsuki he was very much mistaken.

“You're not welcome to touch me whenever you feel like it, Viktor. And I am not being dramatic.” Yuuri narrowed his eyes. “I’m promising you retaliation.”

“Still dramatic,” Viktor hummed lightly, and he flicked whatever he had taken from the dashboard into Yuuri’s lap. A slim white envelope. “I went to the minor trouble of retrieving those for you. Your friend in Kyoto, her name is Yuko, yes?”

Slowly, Yuuri ran his index finger beneath the sealed paper flap, sliced the envelope open carefully. A single paper was folded inside, and Yuuri opened it to discover a string of Cyrillic numerals in Viktor’s handwriting. A phone number. Beneath that, a Kyoto address.

Yuuri’s hands trembled. He wanted to be grateful, wanted to be moved by this gesture that had surely been more difficult than Viktor would admit. According to Minako, the Nishigoris were difficult people to find. But he would not thank Viktor Nikiforov.

“Did you know she's married now?” Viktor said, and his gaze had flickered back to the road. Yuuri was glad, both for this demonstration of at least _some_ desire not to die via reckless driving, and for the removal of the weight which Viktor’s attention had placed on his chest.

“Yes,” Yuuri said softly. He thumbed the edge of the paper meditatively. _Yuko._ “Minako told me.”

“Did she tell you she has children?” Yuuri looked sharply to Viktor at this, studied his side profile for evidence of a joke or a lie. There was nothing, but Yuuri could never be sure if Viktor was lying if he was not looking at him. His eyes were truthful, but that was all.

“No.” The reply was stiff only because Yuuri was trying so hard not to be openly emotional. “No, I didn't--”

“Triplets.” And at this Yuuri tipped his head back against the seat and closed his eyes and swallowed thickly and he knew Viktor was watching and still he could not _help it--_

“Why?” Yuuri demanded suddenly, brusquely. “Why?”

Nikiforov sounded amused. “Why does she have triplets, or--”

“Why did you do this?” _For me_. He could not bring himself to give life to those last two words. But they hovered in the air between them, swelled and expanded until Yuuri was practically choking on their implications. “I don't--”

“Well.” Viktor shrugged, effortless. “You look lonely, moping around in my house all the time. I can’t stand to watch you be pathetic _all_ the time, so I figured an old ally might help.”

Which did not make sense. Viktor Nikiforov had promised multiple times that he would end Katsuki Yuuri’s life, and that he would evoke extreme satisfaction from the action too, and this mild act of altruism did not match up with his other plans for Yuuri.

But then again, Nikiforov was masterful at knocking Katsuki Yuuri off balance, and he had done it again, beautifully, with this thin white envelope and five lines of handwritten Russian. Yuuri’s fingers trembled as he folded the paper again, tucked it inside the envelope, and pressed the flimsy thing to his mouth. To ensure it was real, perhaps. To memorize the feeling of it in his hands and on his lips and _here_ and tangible because he could not be sure anymore. He couldn’t trust anything anymore, least of all himself and his own perception of things.

“Anyway,” Viktor was saying, and Yuuri tore the envelope away from his face and tucked it primly into his coat and did his best to fight the color that rushed to his cheeks, “She doesn't care for me, I don't think. Told my representative in very impolite words what I could do with her address and phone number in Kyoto. And after I’d gone to all that trouble of finding her, too.”

“She's never liked you,” Yuuri mumbled. “She's a good judge of character.”

“So are dogs. And dogs love me.”

Yuuri closed his eyes again. His fingers rested on his lapel, and he tapped a quiet rhythm over the envelope. To ground himself. To check that it stayed where it was. To give himself something to do that was not looking at Viktor Nikiforov and wonder how they had gotten here from where they had been and how on earth Yuuri was going to get himself out of this one.

“This doesn't make up for anything else.” Yuuri said it, because it was the only thing he could think to voice that was not gratitude, but even this was a concession. Surrender under the guise of letting Viktor know he appreciated the gift, as if he did not know it would come with strings attached. “It doesn’t.”

Viktor laughed. “I'm not apologizing for anything I’ve ever done to you with a _phone number,_ Katsuki Yuuri.” He turned the wheel too quickly to pull the Camaro up the Nikiforov drive, and Yuuri lurched forward with the momentum of the vehicle. He suspected Viktor had done it on purpose. “I don't know how you came under the impression that I have anything that I want to apologize for at all.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Hmm.” Viktor pulled the keys from the ignition, swung his legs out of the driver’s side so his back was ever so briefly turned on Katsuki Yuuri. It would be a perfect time to slice open his spinal cord, if Yuuri had been inclined to do so. If he was allowed to do so under his agreement with Fuchū, instead of being condemned to just sit in this mausoleum on Nevsky Prospekt and decay. “Maybe I am sorry. But only for not killing you when I had the chance.”

“You should be.” Yuuri checked again that the envelope was tucked safely in his suit coat and opened the passenger side door. Placed a hand on the roof of the vehicle and pulled himself out of the car as effortlessly as he could manage. Viktor watched him move appreciatively. _You’ll regret it soon enough._ But Yuuri was not brave enough, not stupid enough, to speak this aloud.

Viktor looked at him evenly over the hood of the Camaro, and Yuuri met his gaze. A stalemate, though this time Yuuri knew who would be the rightful winner. It was not him.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Give Nishigori Yuko my regards.” Yuuri sneered, and he added, “Remember who owns you, Katsuki Yuuri.”

“You do _not--”_

But Viktor was already stalking up the path, the line of his shoulders proud and unafraid, and Yuuri faltered and drew in on himself too easily to ever fool himself that Viktor Nikiforov was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a Grade A Mess and also the second time I've tried uploading this thing tonight, so rip honestly I couldn't care less about this chapter anymore. The good news is that this is the last of the transitional/introspective chapters, and the next update gets entirely back into the current plot. 
> 
> There's an interesting article/interview on women's involvement (or lack thereof) in the yakuza here: http://www.japansubculture.com/wives-of-the-yakuza/ There's also a memoir translated into English out there called Yakuza Moon written by the daughter of a mob boss, but it looks pretty heavy and I haven't read it so idk abt content warnings. I assume there's a lot.
> 
> The Japanese names are stolen from two Haruki Murakami novels: After Dark, which I have read and which takes place in a 24-hour Tokyo Denny's (idk, it was good but incredibly strange), and 1Q84, which I have not read and thus can't recommend yet.
> 
> All quotations and book references in this chapter are taken from the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which if you're interested in Russian lit, their translations are the only way to go. (They're incredible.) The extended quote about love is actually spoken in the novel by a popular Petersburg figure skater about another skater that he's in love with, though this is entirely a coincidence and I didn't use it for that purpose lol.
> 
> I intended to have this up by 9 pm central time, but my laptop is broken and my phone is uncooperative, so my sincerest apologies. Also apologies for not updating last week; I can't predict yet if the next chapter will be out by next Friday or the Friday after that. It will be one of the two.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to contact me here or on tumblr (my url is fortinbra) at any time. 
> 
> xx


	9. Full Disclosure

In his new bedroom, phone balanced carefully in the palm of his hand, legs crossed underneath him, duvet bunched and drawn around his legs like it could bring any warmth or comfort at all, Yuuri was seventeen again.

Seventeen and trembling, seventeen and absolutely convulsive with fear and remorse and the conscious recognition that this was damning, this was the worst thing he had ever done and there was no going back now and nothing nothing nothing was ever going to save his soul after this. Seventeen and soaked with another man’s blood and grey matter and Yuuri was not _made_ for this like he had thought it was _too much--_

Arms encircled his chest and Yuuri jerked violently and almost hurt her but Yuko’s cheek was pressed to his back and her voice was familiar like his own sister’s would have been familiar, in another life, and he did not. Hurt her. He did not.

“Yuuri,” she whispered, and the sound that escaped his mouth was not human because he was not human he was monstrous and this was what Minako had done to him this was why his father would not speak to him this was why the last time he had gone home to Hasetsu, Mari had refused to see him and his mother had looked at him with such pity and fear and said-- “Yuuri, please.”

_I think you should leave. Please leave, Yuuri. Love. Please._

“I _killed_ someone,” Yuuri confessed in a sob, like the proof was not in front of him and all over his hands like he did not look like a fucking Park film like he had not spent the last four years of his life training to be capable of something like this. “Yuko--”

“Yuuri. Baby.” Yuko’s voice was quietly soothing, her hands stroking his chest, and when Yuuri’s legs gave way beneath him she caught him effortlessly against her shoulder and held him there. Pressed her lips to the crown of his head like a mother would do, like his mother would have done had Yuuri not shamed her into never wanting to see him again. “Shh. Yuuri, it's okay. It’s okay.”

“It's _not--”_

“It _is_ , baby, it is.” And Yuuri closed his eyes and _god_ he was really going to cry here over his first murder like some type of teenage sociopath, wasn't he, and he was awful this was awful he just wanted to go _home--_ “I’m so proud of you. You're very brave.”

Yuuri choked, and Yuko gently turned him to face her, pressed his face into her neck with a gentle hand at the base of his skull, and she let him cry into her collar for embarrassingly too long. This was dishonorable, more so than the murder itself. Yakuza did not _weep_ over business, and being seventeen was no excuse at all. If Yuuri could not handle his profession, he could not handle it, and no one was here to coddle him based on his age.

“I want to go home,” Yuuri whispered, and Yuko stroked his hair and nodded softly and murmured, “We’ll be home soon, Yuuri, I promise.”

But Yuuri did not want Tokyo. Tokyo was not home, Tokyo was Minako’s playground and Yuuri did not want to step foot back in that damned city for the rest of his life. Yuuri wanted Hasetsu. Yuuri wanted his father to look at him like he was proud of him and not irrevocably ashamed of his yakuza heir, he wanted his mother to speak to him like a son again and not like some dangerous, sickening stranger that had suddenly waltzed into her home and knelt before her table, he wanted Mari to be the reason they argued again and not Yuuri, no, he wanted to never argue with his sister again, he wanted he wanted he wanted--

 _I have debtors in Osaka that I want visited._ Minako had said it, centuries ago, and she had unfolded her hands and pointed at Katsuki Yuuri levelly. _And I want you to handle them this time, Yuuri. Not Yuko._

Because Yuko was older--not by much but still enough enough enough--she had always been the recipient of Minako’s more grisly assignments. But Yuuri was growing up now, and this was his legacy just as much as it was Yuko’s, and he needed to start pulling his weight again. And that meant killing in Minako’s name.

“I need to clean this up,” Yuuri said deliriously, pulling his head from Yuko’s shoulder and knocking his skull against her hand in the process. He was lightheaded from the crying, and his eyes hurt from not wearing his glasses and everything was wrong wrong wrong about his body and the way his skin was vacuum-packed to his bones and _please_ not here not now--

“Yuuri.” Yuko’s hand slid to the back of his neck to keep him looking at her, and Yuuri trembled with the effort of keeping the panic at bay, and Yuko looked so damned pitying it was vile. He was not made for this. He knew it. She knew it. “Yuuri, look at me. You're okay. You're more than okay. You're wonderful. Do you understand me?”

She was looking for a response, and Yuuri was strangely grateful for it because speaking grounded him in this moment and he felt marginally less like a soul separated from his body when he said, “Yes. I understand.”

He pulled away from her too abruptly, and for a moment he thought he was going to collapse on himself because surely his legs could not hold his weight now, but they did, and he righted his posture and closed his eyes and said, “I need to clean this up.”

They were in the tatami room of a rich man’s house in Osaka, and even as he said it Yuuri knew there was no possible way to clean up any part of the mess he had created. The mats were soaked with blood and brain matter, and Yuuri had torn several of them in their struggle. There was an incriminating slash in one of the fusuma doors, and it was an effective herald to the mess which the man’s wife and children would encounter when they returned. Everything within the room was now red and brown and black with Satoru Nakata’s last futile struggle for life.

Yuko said, “Leave it,” and Yuuri found himself nodding. Exhaustedly, but also practically. This was a message, after all. When Yuko had delivered Minako’s regards, on past assignments, she had never cleaned up her bloody messes. Why bother? Murder was still murder, despite whatever pretty packaging one provided, and Minako’s reputation for tradition was not so complete that it extended to politely scrubbing the floors on which one left their brutalized human warning.

Yuuri nodded, and he kept nodding as Yuko gently steered him out of the room, and when she helped him fold into the passenger side of her sleek little Datsun, and when she sought out his cheek with her hand and wiped away the saltwater on his skin, and he kept nodding until he fell asleep in the gentle moonlight of the countryside. It felt, almost, like home.

Katsuki Yuuri slept for the dead then, and did not wake until Yuko shook him so hours later, back in Tokyo, and for a few hours the world was fine because he did not have to face it. When he did, conscious again and composed and standing bloody at attention in Minako’s office, Yuko was by his side. And so that was fine too.

Even back then, Katsuki Yuuri thought now, ten years into the future--even then it had been easier. Seventeen-year-old Katsuki Yuuri had been weak and naive and stunningly human, and he could never have imagined this. Never have dreamt himself strong enough to handle it, to survive a month of constant panic clawing up his throat, a guilt equivalent to twenty-five Satoru Nakata murders, this deadly sparring with Viktor Nikiforov that seemed to have no positive end for Yuuri in sight.

His hands had begun to tremble, and the phone slid from his palm and thumped onto the mattress. Irritated by even this private weakness, Yuuri reclaimed it, and then dialed the phone number Viktor had given him before he could convince himself to do otherwise.

It was midnight in Japan. Yuko would be awake. Especially if Viktor was truthful in saying she had recently had triplets. Yuuri didn't know much about children, had never had the opportunity in his line of work to encounter very many, but he imagined one didn't sleep very often when she was the mother of three toddlers.

Someone picked up on the third ring. Yuko’s voice was haggard, slightly older than Yuuri remembered, and he felt overwhelming guilt at the realization that some of that aging might have been his fault. _“Hai?”_

“Yuko,” Yuuri said, and his voice fell several decibels and he could pitch it no louder without sounding tearful. He was a mess. He was still not fit for this. “Yuko, it's Yuuri.”

* * *

 

"Don’t look at me like that. I’m doing the best I can.” There was not very much emotional range to a poodle’s expression. Makkachin was doing his damnedest to look disapproving regardless.

Viktor kicked off his shoes too carelessly for their expensive quality, loosened his collar tiredly before collapsing on the bed. His day had been suitably exhausting. Suitably horrible. “Come up here.” He thumped the mattress beside him, molded his voice into gentle coaxing. “Come on.”

Makka was not very good at holding a grudge. Barking excitably, a sharp sound that made exhausted Viktor flinch, he leapt onto the bed and made his short rounds before settling beside him, resting his head on Viktor’s chest. The poodle sighed contentedly, in that way old dogs did after exerting any mild type of effort towards anything, and Viktor closed his eyes.

“I don't know what to do,” he whispered, bringing a hand up to stroke the dog’s head contemplatively. “I don't. I don't know what to do.”

Everyone else seemed to know what to do. Chris knew. Mila knew. Yakov knew. And they were all in agreement on the same necessary course of action, which _must_ have lent it some credibility, too.

But Viktor couldn't bring himself to feel like it was right. Because, surely, surely, it was not. How was mariticide justified before a court of morals? Viktor could justify most anything, bend any of his actions to fit any type of agenda and make them undeniably _good_ and _right_ before even an unsympathetic audience. He was charismatic, and gifted in that way.

But he could not justify this. Did not think it was possible to do so, if only because it was _Yuuri_ and Viktor had tried and failed once already to get rid of him and found himself just shy of enough courage to do so.

Weak. He knew he was this too, and he did not even object to being privately branded so. For it was motivation at its finest. Kill Katsuki Yuuri, and be strong in the eyes of his peers and his enemies again. Kill Katsuki Yuuri, and never again be _weak_.

Privately, Viktor Nikiforov knew what he was going to do. He would do as he was told, for his own headstrong schemes had never brought him anything but ruin anyway, and Yakov knew what he was doing especially when Viktor did not. But he would not enjoy it, regardless of what he had promised Katsuki. And it would not be right.

His hand had paused in its gentle rhythmic stroking of Makkachin’s ears, and the dog flicked his head upwards to bump his fingers insistently, to coax Viktor back into petting him as he deserved. When this did not immediately convince, Makkachin licked his fingers, and Viktor tipped his head to the side and breathed deeply in a hopeful imitation of sleep. It was still early evening, but then again, he had absolutely nothing better to do besides decay anyway.

“Would you forgive me again, for killing him?” It was a gentle question, one a dog clearly did not have the nuance of morality with which to answer, and Makkachin simply tipped his head and whined at the criminal lack of adoration he was receiving. Viktor resumed petting him thoughtfully. “Yes, I believe you would. Eventually.” Perhaps not soon enough, but eventually.

The first time Yuuri had disappeared from the Plisetsky house, presumably for good, Makkachin had been distraught. He had spent a good several months loping from window to window in the mansion, whining pathetically at every shadow that could have been a sign of Katsuki Yuuri’s return. Then, when he finally resigned himself to the truth that Katsuki Yuuri was not returning home, he had spent six months moping around the house, refusing all Viktor’s attempts at peacemaking, only curling up into his lap when he absolutely could not ignore the miserable condition of his owner with a dog’s clear conscience.

They had been a pathetic pair, Viktor and Makkachin, in the months after Katsuki Yuuri’s arrest. Viktor felt guilty suggesting Makka endure such a thing again, especially considering the dog’s age. He would not live forever, after all, and taking Yuuri from him again so late in his years was cruel.

But he could not really base his policy decisions on a fucking _poodle_ anymore, could he? He was not exactly seventeen anymore.

He had found Makkachin on Vladimirsky Prospekt when he was still young and idealistic and did not realize that a mangy stray dog with two broken legs was a lost cause in ordinary cases, and a sure invitation for punishment under Nikolai Plisetsky's parentage. How _soft_ of him, to become so immediately attached to a dying dog, how utterly unprofessional to scoop the puppy up into his arms and when Yakov said derisively, “Viktor, _fleas,”_ to realize that he was already tearful.

“It’s been hit,” he lamented, and he knew he must have been the picture of saintliness with his narrow teenage face and long, long hair and this kicking, whimpering bundle of parasites in his arms. Even this young, Viktor knew how to use his appearance to his advantage. “Yakov, it's hurt really badly.”

“I see that,” Yakov had said gruffly, his eyes shifting away from Viktor’s face. He would never admit it, but Yakov had a soft spot for children. “And I’m sure you're not helping it holding it up like that.”

Hastily, Viktor shifted the puppy in his arms, taking as much pressure off its back legs as possible. The swimming front leg kick with which the dog had been frantically attempting an escape slowed, stopped, and the puppy leaned into his chest with a whimper. Viktor traced the slope of its nose up between its eyes, and the creature retaliated by burrowing its head into his coat.

It was freezing--they were in the midst of a true Russian cold snap at the moment, and _freezing_ held a different connotation in Saint Petersburg than it did anywhere else--and Viktor doubted the puppy would survive much longer in the alley behind a Vladimirsky brothel like this. Even without the broken legs.

 _“Yakov.”_ Because Yakov could not say no to Viktor Nikiforov, and this was his one fault in his character, and if there was one thing that was worth the manipulation of that affection Yakov harbored for him, Viktor thought, it was this. “Yakov, please. It’s _dying.”_

“I’m aware of that,” Yakov Feltsman snapped, and Viktor felt his lower lip wobble involuntarily. “What would you like me to do about it? I can put it down for you, Vitya, if that will make you feel better--”

 _“No.”_ And now he was really crying, and this was not manipulation, this was simply a seventeen-year-old boy who was much too emotional for his own good, and much too good for the type of man he was expected to be. “Yakov, please, it needs help--”

“And how do you know its spine isn't broken, Vitya? How do you know your help would do that thing any sort of good?” Yakov Feltsman paced the sidewalk, which meant he was considering it. Viktor had known he would. “It’s just a stray. Leave it be.”

“It’d be paralyzed if its spine was broken, Yakov. And anyway, you like strays,” Viktor insisted, like it was an endgame of a statement, and Yakov cut his eyes at him irritably.

“I find that I like them less and less every day, Vitenka,” he said, and Viktor was cognizant enough of the barb to be mildly hurt but not enough to be deterred.

“I’ll do all the work, I’ll find the veterinarian, I’ll do it all,” he vowed desperately. “Yakov, please, it's just a puppy--”

“Nikolai is not going to be happy,” Yakov reminded him through clenched teeth, and Viktor’s laugh finally carried with it a tinge of that hereditary cruelty.

“Who gives a damn what he thinks?” he demanded, which made Yakov pinch the bridge of his nose and scowl.

“Considering he's my employer, and your predecessor in this entire damned business, we both _should_ , Viktor--”

“Well, I don't.”

“At least _pretend_ to have a sense of self-preservation--”

“Yakov,” Viktor pleaded, and Yakov stopped pacing to drag a hand down his worn face. Between Viktor and Lilia’s new youngest Plisetsky charge, rich Russian heirs had really begun to run him ragged in recent years.

“Fine. But don't blame me when the vet tells you the same thing as I did--the best thing for that dog would be to euthanize it, not bring it into our house, Viktor.” And it was true, probably, but it was also posturing, and Viktor did not presently mind that Yakov could not seem to say a single nice thing without qualifying it with three cruel ones because he was saying _yes_.

And Viktor looked at him with a wild kind of relief, and Yakov waved all professions of neverending gratitude away gruffly, and the puppy whimpered and sniffled and yawned inside his coat as they turned right off Vladimirsky and went home.

The leg diagnosis was bad. One hundred and seventy-eight thousand rubles was petty cash when one was a Plisetsky, but Viktor was still a child and thus not on the family payroll, and he would be damned before he asked Nikolai for help. The old man had already expressed quite explicitly his stance on Viktor keeping the poodle, on his distastefully plebeian habits of letting it sleep in his bed and smuggling table scraps up to his room to feed it, and promised to break more than its legs if the thing ever got in his way.

So Viktor would not ask his adoptive father for help.

Instead he stole several bound stacks of rubles from the safe in Nikolai’s private office and tucked the puppy into his most ragged coat and, in full view of the sleepy veterinarian office’s staff and patrons, dumped the entire armful of cash onto the receptionist’s counter.

“I need help,” he said, and the way the woman looked at him left no doubt that she recognized him, even with his hair pulled back and his clothes the most worn and unassuming as he could find rummaging in the back of his closet and with the characteristic Plisetsky coldness he always wore in photos now replaced with a very human kind of desperation. She recognized him.

“I--I can't accept this money,” she protested nervously, trying to shove it back onto his side of the counter, and Viktor would not cry here not in front of people for whom he was already a household name, and so he swallowed thickly and repeated himself.

“I need help.”

“Don't you have _people_ to do this for you--”

“No.” For good measure, he let some of that infamous coolness slip back into his tone, and he was older like this, he was _better_ than these people, regardless if he needed their help now he was better and he would not beg--

“Please,” he said, involuntarily.

_Pathetic._

The receptionist’s eyes flickered to his and then to the rubles on the counter and then to the miserable mangy stray, looking considerably less mangy after the bath Viktor had given it in his own tub (oh, Nikolai would be _livid_ if he ever discovered _that)_ but still just as miserable as before, tucked into his coat. And she nodded. Slowly.

“Okay. Okay.” She breathed raggedly, like this unfairly beautiful seventeen-year-old and his ridiculous amount of money was the most dangerous thing she had ever encountered, and Viktor did not doubt that he was, actually, and she was right to be terrified of him and the empire he represented. “But I can't accept your money. I won’t.”

“I have nothing else to offer.” It was true, painfully so. He forced himself to smile, hoped she would not see how fragile the expression was. “I’m afraid it's blood money or nothing.”

She held his gaze for a long time, bravely, because Viktor knew he was not easy to look in the eyes since Lilia had taught him how not to be, and sighed. “Fine.” Then she turned back to the computer in front of her and tapped out a long string of letters. “Name?”

“Vik--”

“I know your name, kid.” And Viktor blinked, his eyes widened at her boldness, and a nervous laugh clawed up his throat. He had spent the last several years of his life indoctrinated with the knowledge that he was prettier, smarter, better than those that did not bear the Plisetsky name and privilege. But if even a fraction of regular people were like this, perhaps he would have to rethink that policy. “I need a name for the dog.”

“Oh.” Amazingly, he had never gotten that far into the dog-owning process. He was too preoccupied with the whole broken-leg business. “Um.” She looked at him expectantly, and he blinked again. _For god’s sake, say something._ But he didn't know, was not good at spontaneous cleverness, and really couldn't they just fix the dog before they discussed naming it this was not the most pressing business at hand--

The receptionist raised an eyebrow, and Viktor panicked. Said the first thing that came to mind.

“Makkachin.”

And Makkachin it was.

His legs were still bad, twelve years later, had gotten worse with age. Viktor had not previously allowed himself to consider the possibilities of Makkachin not living much longer, and he knew it was childish and petulant but he could not endure the thought of the dog being suddenly absent from his life. Makka had been a constant before, during, and after Katsuki Yuuri, even before, during, and after Viktor’s rise to power in Saint Petersburg, and if anything was a devastating comfort when Viktor suddenly remembered how irrevocably human he was, it was his dog.

“I don't know what to do,” Viktor whispered again, folding the confession into a kiss to Makkachin’s ear, and Makka sighed that old dog sigh again and Viktor thought perhaps he meant to communicate something by it. That it was okay. That Viktor was being difficult and ridiculous and maudlin but it was okay because that was just who he was and twelve years had taught Makkachin how to endure him at his most difficult. And also that he would forgive him whatever Viktor had to do to save his own skin, because that was what good dogs did and Makkachin was never the exception to that rule.

And this, perhaps, was the most comforting of it all.

* * *

 

“Oh, _Yuuri.”_

At first, Yuko had been incredulous. Then she had been overjoyed. Then, when that had worn off and the six years of stupid things Yuuri had done come trickling back and awoken in her memory, she had been livid. But now she was just…sad.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri whispered. “I really am.”

“You really do have the worst luck, don't you?”

And Yuuri laughed, and it was a choking sound. “I guess so. Can you believe I thought it had been good, once?”

“Because you’re a masochist,” Yuko said matter-of-factly, and she wasn't wrong. Yuuri laughed again, and Yuko’s tone was suddenly gentle. “Yuuri. Can I ask?”

 _No._ Had it been anyone else, Yuuri would have snapped a negative immediately, because baring himself with no sociopolitical gain was not what Katsuki Yuuri did, it was not allowed. He had told Minako no, back when he was just out of Fuchū and still hardened enough to dare to speak back to her, but this was Yuko. “Yes.”

Yuko sighed, acknowledging his weakness with this subtle pause, and asked tentatively, “Did you--did you really love him?”

And Yuuri could not lie, could not even mold his response into something careless or caustic, and so he sighed too. Whispered into the phone's receiver with a desperately modest hand clamped over his mouth, “Oh, more than anything.”

Yuko sounded like she nodded. There was a pause as she considered this confession, and then she said, “I want to kill him.”

Yuuri closed his eyes. He knew he should take care in what he was saying, knew that it was likely Viktor was counting on him using this phone to call Yuko so he could derive some motive for Yuuri’s return from eavesdropping on them. But he also found that he suddenly did not care what Viktor Nikiforov knew and what he did not about Katsuki Yuuri.

“Yes.” And it was such a simple thing to say, but it felt _good_ to say it, to breathe life into the promise. He wanted to kill Viktor Nikiforov, and he wanted it to be absolutely divine. “But I want to make him hurt first.”

“Be careful, Yuuri.” It was an old warning, and utterly futile, reminiscent of Tokyo clubs and red wine and Viktor Nikiforov his damned self pressing paper yen into Yuuri’s hands, and Yuuri smiled to hear it.

“When have I ever been careful, Yuko?”

“And when has recklessness ever worked in your favor?” Yuko retaliated snappishly. Immediately, Yuuri ducked his head. Chastised, and humbled too. That had been foolish of him to say.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

“You don't _know_ , Yuuri,” Yuko was saying now, and Yuuri carded a hand through his hair, exhausted. He did know. He was living it. “When I heard the news--the papers said--hell, Yuuri, it was horrible here. And the things people said in the club, like they didn't know we were partners once, they didn't _care--”_

“You don't need to remind me how everyone hates me at home, Yuko,” Yuuri warned. “I am well aware.”

“Don't be an ass,” she snapped, and he was chastised again. Nikiforov’s house, his country, had changed him and regardless of the painstaking measures Yuuri had always taken to avoid becoming too Russian, the evidence was here. In the way he talked, the way he treated people.

He was a fucking disgrace.

The phone vibrated against his ear, once, twice, and on the nightstand the government phone chimed a third time, and Yuuri flinched guiltily. Like he had been caught in the act of betraying the Plisetsky house. Even if he knew nobody in Nikiforov’s estate could speak enough conversational Japanese to understand what he was confiding in Nishigori Yuko.

“I have to go.”

“Yuuri.” It sounded like an admonishment. Yuuri collapsed back against the mattress, miscalculating his own height in the process, and cracked his skull against the headboard.

 _Fuck._ He was a mess. A seventeen-year-old mess.

“What was that?” She meant the low Russian he had spit into the receiver, accompanied by the splitting sound of his head on lacquered cherrywood. He hated that Russian was the language of his involuntary self now. He would not confess such a thing to Nishigori Yuko.

“Nothing.” A beat of silence, in which neither knew how to say goodbye. “Yuko, I really do need to go.”

“Okay.” Yuko sounded exhausted. “Okay. Good night, Yuuri.”

“Wait.” Because Yuuri had suddenly remembered what Viktor had said, and he would be a truly horrible friend not to ask, and he was curious anyway. He really was. “Your kids. What are they like?”

“My…” Her tone was wondering. Suspicious, too. “Who told you--”

“Vik--” The name caught in his throat. It was too familiar. “Nikiforov said--said you had triplets.”

“I don't care for him knowing anything more about any other people I care for, Katsuki Yuuri,” she said sharply, and Yuuri closed his eyes.

“I just want to know, Yuko. Are they--are they boys? Or--”

“Girls.”

Girls. And probably wonderful, too. Yuuri might have cared for children, once upon a time. Before Minako, and before profit and reputation became his idols. Yuko had never let the Okukawa influence ruin her so.

“I'm happy for you.” And he was. He would not lie about such things. “You're good at that kind of thing, you know. Practically raised me for eight years.”

“I could have done better in that respect,” Yuko said scathingly, and Yuuri laughed. Then the bitterness dropped from her tone, and Yuko sounded almost like she smiled. “Thank you, Yuuri. Stay alive for me, and I might even let you meet them.”

“I...I would like that.” He would. “Thank you.”

“Yes.” On the other end, Yuko hesitated. Mild background noise told Yuuri she had pulled the phone away from her mouth, was speaking in a gentle voice that bled with a new, unfamiliar Kansai accent. “I'll be right up. Yes. Yes. I know.” She laughed softly, and it was a nice, almost carefree sound. “I’ll tell him so.”

Yuuri’s phone vibrated again. He really did need to go. As much as he wanted to spend an entire night in Yuko’s easy company, he had other, more pressing matters at which to direct his attention.

Yuko said, “Takeshi says that when you kill Nikiforov, make sure to do it in public so he can watch it on the news.”

And suddenly, Yuuri didn't have the heart to remind her that he would not be killing Viktor Nikiforov. That instead he was a snake in conspiracy with the Japanese government and eight other international governing organizations and the most he could ever do to Viktor Nikiforov was break enough cartilage in his face to make his mugshots as equally horrid as Katsuki’s had been. That he was not the Katsuki Yuuri of legend anymore, and he had no courage left to be disobedient with his own family’s safety on the line.

Instead, he laughed and said, “I’ll do my best,” and after Yuko bid him goodbye Yuuri softly, softly let the phone drop into his lap.

The darkened screen blinked with three messages, two from Nikiforov and one from Leroy. Yuuri regarded all three blank notifications with terrible trepidation. He opened Viktor’s first.

_dinner tomorrow at yuri’s. u will be there._

And then:

_lucky u. since chris isn't here, u get to sit at my right hand._

How kind of him. Yuuri tasted copper in his mouth.

JJ’s text was uncharacteristically more succinct. The metallic taste spread onto his tongue, and Yuuri realized the sting in his mouth was from the considerable chunk of flesh he had just torn from the inside of his cheek. Reflex.

_out of time. nikiforov says tomorrow._

Yuuri scowled. It was not JJ Leroy’s business to tell him whether he was out of time or not. It was not Leroy’s business to do anything but take Yuuri’s orders anymore.

He replied to JJ first: _we are not. i say tomorrow too_.

Leroy’s response was equally terse. Yuuri would have to speak to him about proper respect of one’s superiors. u don't rlly think i can organize it all in one night, do u?

_im telling you that you will._

To Viktor Nikiforov, Yuuri simply said: i hope you make it worth my while, nikiforov.

The fourth text was from Chulanont, on the other phone, and Yuuri did not bother reading it in its entirety before firing off a message. It was something about Fuchū reports. Yuuri couldn't bring himself to really care. He was exhausted with them all.

_taking charge tomorrow night. there's a report for you._

He didn't bother with the ensuing flurry of messages from Phichit Chulanont. He turned the Fuchū connection off and slipped the device between the mattress and the fitted sheet. Viktor discovering it would be the end of Katsuki Yuuri and all his plans, after all.

It was still early in the evening. Four years ago, Yuuri would have whittled away this free time in Nikiforov’s company, with drugs or books or sex or sparring. Everything they had done during these private moments in the estate, healthy or not, had been done in the company of each other. Yuuri did not know whether he found this memory suffocating or simply distasteful now. How _inseparable_ they had been. How _in love._

Decidedly suffocating, then.

His entertainment options thus limited to lonely pursuits within the confines of his room, Yuuri opted for sleep. Anything else required more energy than he possessed, anything else required dredging up unwanted memories of Katsuki-Nikiforov era exploits Yuuri would only find humiliating now. Anything else was too, too much.

Revolutions were exhausting things to begin. Thus Yuuri slept through the night and into the late morning, and was visited by no nightmares. He had no dreams at all.

* * *

 

The day Viktor Nikiforov was to kill Katsuki Yuuri, he awoke nauseated to an incredible degree. And it was really not _fair_ , given his sobriety the night before, given the fact that this was not the first time he had done something like this, not even the first time he had offed Katsuki Yuuri himself, and _Christ_ , he was pathetic.

He was also currently vomiting. The desire to do so had overcome him so suddenly that he had barely the time to lurch out of bed (still half-dressed in his clothes from the previous evening) before he was on his knees. He’d left the master bath door open in his haste, and Makkachin trotted in after him with an air of innocent concern. Regarded the scene with some measure of confusion, and then when he found he could not entreat Viktor to look at him--which was justifiable, given his attention was arrested by other matters--the dog rested his head on his thigh and whined.

He was a mess. This entire setup, this grave he’d dug for himself, was collapsing in on itself. And all because Viktor could not sever the part of him that had wanted Katsuki Yuuri from the part that recognized that allowing him to live was very, very bad politics.

Fingers trailed down his spine, a memory which made him convulse terribly with numerous unnamed emotions. Katsuki Yuuri had loved touching him so, loved taking him to pieces by tracing the individual vertebrae until Viktor gave himself wholly up to him. But this memory was of a different nature.

 _Anata_ , he’d murmured, and there was another hand in his hair, stroking his temples slowly as Viktor shook. _I know. I know. It hurts. But it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay._

In the memory Viktor had swayed against him, shuddered, and Yuuri had not removed his hand from his hair but he pressed his lips lightly to his forehead over and over again, and Viktor closed his eyes.

“I’m never doing that again.” And Katsuki had laughed, because it was a ridiculous vow, and Viktor’s hand had curled and uncurled on his chest like muscle memory, and in the present Viktor slid gracelessly to the floor. Pressed his forehead to the cool bathroom tile and promised himself _you can do this you will do this you have no other choice--_

 _Anata_. Yuuri had told him once that Japanese did not quite have words for this type of affection they shared, that any professions of love were not as commonplace in his mother tongue as Viktor was accustomed to. Anata was a married word, a commitment in its very utterance, and Viktor used to love to hear it applied to himself. Used to ask for it, because Yuuri did not use it nearly as often as Viktor wished he would, and in the beginning its use had brought on a lovely flush to his pale cheeks because Katsuki Yuuri was shy like a goddamn teenager with his affections. Viktor loved to see this fact demonstrated so easily, to see his careful criminal facade undone by three syllables of such a confession.

“Next time,” Yuuri had chided gently, “perhaps remember that you are still human, _anata_. Yes?”

And Viktor had turned his face downward, mildly embarrassed. Yuuri did not usually remind him of such things. These were Chris’ words, and their use reminded him of exactly how much he had damaged himself this time. To have Yuuri of all people remind him of his mortality was truly a sign of the gravity of the situation.

“I’d prefer not to be,” Viktor had mumbled against his chest, and Yuuri had laughed. Murmured something which Viktor’s limited Japanese could not translate for him, as his hands shifted from his hair and the small of his back to the space between his shoulders and underneath his thighs, and Viktor made a gentle sound of surprise when Yuuri lifted him off the floor. He let his head fall regrettably from Yuuri’s shoulder as he did so, and his arms slid away from his neck because he was too goddamn exhausted to support himself any further, and Yuuri frowned.

“You’re utterly useless, aren't you?”

In Viktor’s defense, Yuuri was equally useless after a coke comedown, though to date Viktor had yet to lift and carry him bridal style off the bathroom floor to the bed again. Viktor murmured an affirmative into his own hands, which had previously been tracing shapes in the air above him but had since come to rest on his face to block out the harsh sunlight now bleeding through the curtains.

“What did you say, earlier?” He pursued the meaning of the Japanese Yuuri had whispered into his hair with an admirable determination, given his current state, and Yuuri sighed. Laid him gently across the bed, pulled the sheets over him carefully, because Viktor could not get his body to stop fucking trembling while he danced here on the knife’s edge of a cocaine crash. He would be worse in the coming hours, would be deeply more miserable before he got better, but it was not so bad when Yuuri was with him. And Yuuri always stayed. “I didn't understand.”

Yuuri hummed an unfamiliar melody as he sidestepped Viktor’s needy attempts to pull him on top of him and slipped to the opposite side of the bed. It was for his own good, undoubtedly, but Viktor still could not shake the foggy disappointment at such a rejection. He just wanted to touch him, forever. To never take his hands off him. “I said you're as stupid as you are beautiful, Vitya.”

“You didn’t.” Viktor knew enough of those words in Japanese to detect the lie. “I know you didn't.”

The bedclothes rustled as Yuuri slid underneath them, and his hands quietly sought out Viktor’s body to draw him nearer. Viktor sighed, let Yuuri coax him gently from his back onto his side to face him, shut his eyes against the tremors as Yuuri’s thumb traced imagined shapes on his cheeks.

Quietly, he confessed, “I said we cannot all be gods, Viktor Nikiforov.”

Oh, but Viktor _wanted_ them to be. He would immortalize Katsuki Yuuri if it was Viktor Nikiforov’s singular accomplishment as the patriarch of this Bratva house. He promised himself that.

 _You can do this you will do this you have no other choice._ Twenty-nine year old Viktor had the sudden fleeting impression that the bathroom tile was slick with something incriminating, blood or bathwater, and he pulled his face off the floor. Sat up quickly enough to make his head spin.

He had no other choice.

And, really, what better way to immortalize him than to martyr him? Viktor had gifted Katsuki Yuuri quite the page space in the papers after Barcelona. He’d made him famous at the start by inviting him into his bed back when he was twenty-three, he'd given him the means and the opportunities to make himself the Shining Prince of slathering tabloid fame by hiring him in the first place. Viktor Nikiforov had created the monster that was Katsuki Yuuri, Emperor Consort of Saint Petersburg, and he was going to destroy him too.

Makkachin sat back on his haunches and regarded his owner with something that was not pity, but perhaps understanding on the barest level. Viktor looked back at him, quite resolutely for someone who had just emptied his stomach into the toilet bowl at the very thought of homicide. Like he was twenty again.

“I’m okay,” he insisted, more to himself than the dog. “I’m okay.”

He called Chris anyway.

* * *

 

It’s six in the goddamn morning.”

“It’s seven here.”

“Congratulations on your scintillating understanding of time zones, Vik. Why are you calling me.”

Christophe Giacometti was an asshole in the mornings. For someone who emphasized the importance of homemade breakfast and morning sex in a healthy relationship, he really was quite a dick before the sun reached a direct overhead angle.

He found it to be one of his unique charms.

Viktor spoke English for his sake, and even irritated as he was, Chris appreciated this mild gesture. Anything but French was mental gymnastics this early, after two weeks in his home country, and Chris had never really cared for Russian that much anyway. And he had always thought it rude to discuss business in front of a lover in a language he could not understand.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “I’m doing it today. Tonight, I mean.”

“I do hope by _it_ you don't mean Katsuki.”

 _“Nyet._ Well--yes. No.”

“I'm distinctly not comforted by that statement.”

 _“Chris.”_ This was said in the particular exasperated way Viktor always said his name when Christophe spoke reason. Chris knew it was accompanied by fingers hooked near his scalp, faint creases written over his forehead and at the corners of his eyes, a frustrated twist to his mouth because words had always been Viktor’s specialty and he did not like Chris to outdo him in that respect. “I'm not _fucking_ him--”

“Slightly more at ease now.”

“You're a dick.”

“It’s six in the morning.”

_“Seven--”_

_“Asshole_ , what is your point? What are you going to do tonight?”

A pause, a hitch in his breathing, and Chris suddenly remembered him at twenty-one, stained hands and lost expression, knees pulled up to his chest in the house he had just inherited. He had refused to let Chris wash the brown blood from his hands and throat, had fallen asleep on the sofa still fully dressed and horridly painted.

Before Viktor had even spoken, Christophe Giacometti said resolutely, “You will not.”

“Do not give me _orders--”_

“You're not doing something like that alone, Viktor. I won’t let you.”

“This is what you wanted in the first place! And I’m not going to be alone. Mila is home. Leroy, Ji, Iglesia--they're all here. I doubt your presence would be much more helpful than theirs.”

Except in the aftermath. Chris did not say it, but it was true. Viktor was fooling himself if he thought he would be anything resembling a functional businessman for weeks following this. They had too much on the agenda for him to sacrifice his usefulness without Chris there to pick up his slack. Like he always did.

“Viktor. This isn’t well-planned. Don't be rash.” He sounded panicked, he knew, and beside him another body turned sleepily at the change in tone; upon finding him sitting up in bed, explored the angle of his hip with a light mouth. Chris closed his eyes.

Viktor Nikiforov’s tone matched, exceeded his in desperation. “It's been a month. I can't take it anymore. I need him gone to function. I’m too busy to be worried about his intentions anymore.”

“That's not good motivation. That's panic.”

“I _am_ panicked, Chris--”

“That's what I’m saying, Viktor. Relax. He’s not going to do anything in the next two days that he hasn't done in a month. I’ll be home soon.” Viktor’s home was not his home, but his referral to it as such always pleased his best friend. He liked having everything in one place, liked that control, and Chris would occasionally indulge him with a lie in that regard. Though the truth was that Chris much preferred Geneva and its lakes and lowlands to Petersburg's frigid architecture and canals. The truth was that he’d like to return to them one day, permanently, if he could. “Just relax.”

“Okay.” He murmured something low away from the receiver which Chris did not catch. He frowned. “Okay. Yes. You’re right.”

And this was how Christophe knew that Viktor was lying to him. And yet he did nothing about it.

Viktor Nikiforov was running them all into the ground. If it took killing Katsuki Yuuri too early, too rashly, for him to realize it and finally yield to Giacometti’s advice for once, then so be it. Let him do so.

It was a cruel thing for a best friend to think. But that was business.

Chris sighed. “Be safe, Viktor.”

Viktor Nikiforov lied, “Of course.” And then he hung up. Chris tossed his own cell back onto the nightstand and placed a gently possessive hand on the crown of his fiance’s head. He was laid across his lap, had crept his way there while Chris was on the phone, and he smiled serenely up at him now.

“Mm. I thought you were taking a break from business. For once.”

Chris waved his other hand dismissively. “I'm his friend too.”

“And also his nanny?”

Christophe Giacometti closed his eyes briefly, then tapped a finger on his lover’s cheek. “Stop that. He’s already got me wound tightly enough.”

“That's the problem, love. Friends don't do that.” But there was nothing ordinary about the friendship between Viktor and Chris, had not been since they were teenagers and Chris was deeply, foolishly in seventeen-year-old love with him. Definitively not since Chris watched Viktor Nikiforov murder his adoptive father in his early twenties. This was--it was how they were. How business and environment had shaped them both.

“This is just how it is,” Chris said, frustration pulling at the cadence to his voice. “This business with Katsuki--it's a lot for him to deal with. I’m just trying to help.”

“Mm.” Regret twined its way into his voice. “I don't mean to upset you. Let’s do something else.”

Chris nodded, closed his eyes, and did as he was told. Went about the practice of the second of his tenants for a healthy relationship with particular relish, and did his best to forget Viktor Nikiforov for another two days.

* * *

 

You look--nice.”

Viktor Nikiforov was a study in self-immolation. He would much prefer to be a study in knowing when to keep his damned mouth shut.

Katsuki Yuuri’s eyes widened when this compliment of Viktor’s was not immediately accompanied by a scathingly review of his old tie or the state of his shoes or the way his suits still did not quite fit like Viktor had paid for them to fit, five years previously, and he stepped fractionally back into his own room. Then he caught himself in the retreat, and scowled ferociously.

“Thank you. But I don't dress for your benefit.”

And this equally unprepared retort was a gift, because with it Viktor knew how to fix the earnest disadvantage he’d won himself. He smiled, unkindly. “Clearly not,” he agreed. “Or you would be wearing much less.”

Something like rage bloomed in his expression. Katsuki Yuuri snarled, but it was a weak, wordless retaliation and it did nothing to correct Viktor’s smirk.

 _Back on top._ It was easy, with Yuuri. For someone as well versed in sex work as the Okukawa brood could be, he was devastatingly bad at this deadly foreplay they were caught in now. Perhaps it was because of how palpable Viktor’s honesty was. Yuuri had never been skilled at the truth.

_Clearly not. Or you would be wearing much less._

It had not been a statement constructed solely to unbalance him. Yuuri had always dressed for the occasion, and he dressed like he was very much back in his element now. It was undeniably a good look. The thought cost Viktor very little compared to the damage his vocalization of it had dealt Katsuki, and so Viktor could allot himself the pleasure of looking. Yuuri had combed back his hair, revealing a high, sloping forehead, sharp cheekbones which had once borne the evidence of five more kilos of healthy weight, and eyes so deeply brown it was difficult to discern where iris ended and pupil began. He had no glasses again, and his eyebrows were knitted already from the strain of not wearing them. There were creeping edges of ink visible above his collar, in the guise of twisting sakura branches clawing at his throat. According to Katsuki, the cherry blossoms tattooed on his body were supposed to symbolize life.

How ironic.

It was amusing, and strange, to reconcile this Katsuki with the one Viktor had loved. Age and Fuchū had sharpened him further, and Viktor found he appreciated this diamond-cut creature as much as he missed the soft angles to his face and gentle curve to his mouth and throat. Katsuki Yuuri moved differently, more like a predator than a dancer now, and this, too, Nikiforov could appreciate. It was how he moved too. It was heartening to see Katsuki Yuuri still admiring and imitating him, regardless of if he was aware of the fact or not.

In his study of him, Viktor had edged too close for Katsuki’s comfort. Yuuri’s ragged breathing was endearingly noticeable, even as his expression twisted valiantly into an attempt at a sneer, then faltered and swung simply into guarded blankness. A flush crept upwards from his neck, and his pupils dilated nicely. A natural type of high. Viktor smiled, to know how afraid of him he really was. It was certainly something one could get off on.

 _Touch him_. The thought rose unbidden, and Viktor was dipping his head before he could even register his actions, and the only thing that gave him pause was the audible hitch of air in Yuuri’s throat. Viktor blinked. Met Yuuri’s dark, wide eyes calmly, and let himself smile.

_Touch him._

Oh, how he wanted to.

Really, Viktor had nothing to lose here. And there was this to gain: Katsuki Yuuri’s eyelids fluttering, dark lashes brushing his cheeks, mouth parting slowly, gently enough that Viktor doubted he even realized the invitation, lifting his chin imperceptibly to meet him, his pulse frantic beneath his jaw and still he was here and he could be unmasked so _fucking_ completely--

Yes, Katsuki Yuuri still wanted him. He was terrified of him, and he wanted him, and these two things were all Viktor could ever ask of him. All he desired from this unknown, dangerous new creature that had once been his lover.

Still, Viktor was an opportunist of the worst kind. He would steal whatever else he could.

He dipped his head further this time, and Yuuri met him halfway.

Kissing Katsuki Yuuri was just as wonderful as he’d remembered. Viktor had been concerned--he had a tendency to romanticize, and tried always to be cognizant of the fact that nothing was as good as in retrospect. Nothing ever beat a first high.

But this was, and this did. Incredibly, this was better than he’d let himself ever recall.

Quite without a knowledge of how they had come to be there, Viktor’s hands were in Yuuri’s dark hair, maliciously undoing the careful style into which he’d tamed it. Yuuri was a newly vain creature--and this trait in itself was mostly due to Viktor’s hedonist influence--but he did not seem to mind presently what was being done to his hair. As it happened, he was distracted by other things, like teeth and tongues and his fingernails hooked deep into the back of Viktor’s neck.

Viktor made a sound of protest against his mouth, but it was involuntary. Yuuri did not stop, and Viktor did not want him too. Surely he would pay for it in inflamed red evidence, and surely Mila would comment on it at dinner, but it was too wonderful a discomfort to even think of putting an end to it.

Then Katsuki Yuuri leaned into him and arched his back and trusted Viktor to catch him, and he did. One hand between his shoulders, the other beginning at the small of his back but quickly sliding downward to grip his ass, and the wondrous sound Yuuri made with his mouth on Viktor’s was encouragement enough to continue.

He let Yuuri bend more deeply underneath him, and old appreciation again rose within him for Katsuki’s flexibility as he ran his tongue along the inside edge of his mouth and he wanted more he _did_ but this was surely, surely enough.

Viktor drew away quickly enough to inspire surprise but not awareness, and Katsuki Yuuri whimpered and his hands sought ways to draw him back, catching Viktor’s wrist and spreading his fingers flat against his chest, pulling his head desperately forward to meet his mouth again. Yuuri had forgotten himself, forgotten the situation, and Viktor almost wanted to let him continue to embarrass himself because it felt so nice after three years to have him again. He let him yank his head downward, but Viktor did not touch him, did not reciprocate when Katsuki Yuuri hooked his fingers in his hair and whined against his throat a singular word.

_Please._

And Viktor Nikiforov smiled, because it was a wonderful thing to hear Katsuki Yuuri _beg_ again. This time when he pulled away it was with utter, disastrous finality.

“Thank you,” Viktor said. His voice was thick with leftover wanting, but nothing could mask the satisfaction in the statement. “That’s all I needed.”

Katsuki Yuuri blinked woozily, his fingers uncurling against his chest as Viktor's words visibly replayed over and over again in his brain. Viktor watched the realization dawn with a sick type of pleasure, and he allowed himself to smile as Katsuki took a step back and clawed his hand at his own throat. Utter panic.

 _This_ was what it was like to best Katsuki Yuuri. This was what it felt like to truly own every part him. Except, perhaps, his heart.

“You’re welcome,” Yuuri managed, after a beat. It was clear he was aiming for nonchalance, perhaps casual hatred, but it was not working. His eyes were too wide and his cheeks too flushed and the fearful set to his mouth too incriminating for Viktor to ever be fooled. And he could not forget the entreaty of moments ago. Please. “I remembered you being...better. At that.”

“You appeared to be enjoying it regardless,” Viktor drawled. He cast a glance down the hallway and frowned at nothing in particular. A strange mercy had overcome him, and he suddenly wanted to give Katsuki the chance to compose himself before they moved on. “We’re leaving.”

Yuuri nodded. Viktor had expected him to be angrier, in the light of this devastating loss. But he just looked--perplexed. His fingers traced a line down his throat, but the movement had a drugged quality to it. He did not look like he was even aware of the action.

He was beautiful. Viktor wanted to touch him again, to ruin him completely. A sudden image implored him of Katsuki Yuuri on his knees, mouth open and pleading, face tipped back and eyes black with a potent cocktail high that would surely take this memory from him, as Viktor poured a thousand euro bottle of champagne into his mouth. The room had been thick with supplication, golden champagne spilling past his lips and trickling down his chest, Yuuri’s hands drifting above him as if in rapturous prayer. He had begged so thoroughly that he had wept with wanting of him, that night. Viktor Nikiforov had become a religion to Katsuki Yuuri, and the very thought of him had been enough to bring him to his knees, pleading for absolution.

“I don't care for that look,” Yuuri said in the car, and Viktor realized he was reminiscing too obviously, too obscenely. He blinked, and then he smiled. His fingers tightened around the Camaro’s steering wheel, his other hand gripping the shift desperately enough to snap his own fingers.

“I was thinking about the first night you wept because I wouldn't touch you, Yuuri,” he drawled, and even though Katsuki had no memory of such a night, the way he flushed was endlessly gratuitous. He was a wonder. Nothing he did to Viktor was ever less than calculated, and nothing ever made Yuuri ashamed in that regard. But switch their roles, and Katsuki Yuuri’s own submission never failed to humiliate him. Vulnerability was a weapon for Katsuki, but it had always cost him. Now more than ever.

“Perhaps you should have,” Yuuri snapped in real time, “and then you wouldn't be pining so desperately now.”

Viktor Nikiforov raised his eyebrows. He pried his hand from the shift and placed it decisively on his own thigh. Blinked in delicate innocence, but remained silent.

This silence was another mercy. It was so because Viktor knew things about Yuuri that no one else did, things that would ruin him and this false persona he’d woven himself so completely, so cruelly, that Viktor had never once considered using them against him. Things that would not so much drag the name Katsuki Yuuri through the mud but assassinate it so thoroughly that his family would feel the death blow all the way back in Japan. Viktor had never breathed life into these confessions.

But he knew them. And Katsuki Yuuri knew that he did.

Such a confession was this:

Viktor had not just been a tease, that night, though admittedly it had been wonderful to feel Yuuri’s hands on him and to tell him _no_ , to feel the desire building inside him until he was physically tearful with it. Katsuki Yuuri had been too drunk, and too blissfully high, for Viktor to ever put a hand on him in that way. This was a rule he had never broken, and while he was intoxicated Yuuri had often taken to cursing him for it. But neither of them had ever discussed it while sober, and Yuuri had never even breathed a mention of it in the mornings that followed. Possibly because he did not remember, would not let himself remember. Possibly because the thought of himself asking another human being for anything at all was too, too much.

 _Please_. Over and over again, like saying it once and in one tongue was never enough. The progression of his language when Yuuri was wasted was always beautifully deconstructive. _Pozhaluysta. Please. Onegaishimasu._ Like watching him slough off skin after skin until what remained was something honest and fragile and untouchable by someone with hands as filthy as Viktor Nikiforov’s.

This vulnerability was different. This was not the nature of a dangerous man playing at fragility, but the opposite. Viktor knew as much as Yuuri did that any exposure of the famed Shining Prince as anything but calculatedly demure would ruin him, ruin his entire legacy. It was a secret Viktor would not disclose even when he made Yuuri kneel for the last time.

He owed him that.

When they arrived at the Plisetsky residence, Yuuri did not wait for Viktor to escort him inside. He hardly waited for him to turn the key in the ignition before wrenching open the door and stepping out, and when Viktor matched him for movements Yuuri delivered an icy look over the hood of the car.

“I do hope you plan on killing me more permanently this time, Viktor. For your sake.”

Viktor tilted his head to the side and smiled. He had counted on this, on Yuuri knowing his intentions for tonight--he had confessed them so earnestly, after all--and still following him here willingly. Yuuri was not stupid, and he would not have come if he was unprepared. He had plans, though exactly what for Viktor still did not know.

Oh, Viktor would miss this, surely, once Katsuki Yuuri was dead. Terrifying, panic-inducing as his presence was, something about it was just so _fun_. Full of surprises. Viktor promised, “I do not intend to disappoint.”

Neither, he knew, did Yuuri. They would make for a grand performance.

* * *

 

Dining at Viktor Nikiforov’s right hand, with the full knowledge of what was to transpire within the hour, threatened to finally undo him. Yuuri wondered if he really should have forgone the Xanax in favor of a clear head, like he had done. His lungs were filled to the brim with water.

Or perhaps it was with wine. He had drunk a considerable amount of it by this point, enough to dull the anxiety’s edge but still careful to skim above the sloppiness that too much would grant him. With each new glass poured, he offered the cup to Viktor first, and was surprised each time when he accepted. Tasting the cabernet each time at Yuuri’s behest, because Yuuri did not trust him not to poison him here, despite his many promises that poison was not what Viktor had planned for him.

Frequently, but not often enough for the exchange to become noticeable, Yuuri met Lee Seung-Gil’s eyes across the table. Then JJ Leroy’s. Ji Guang-Hong. Leo de la Iglesia. They each blinked back with careful detachment.

Feltsman and Baranovskaya were not present, apparently having more interesting things to do than watch Yuuri top their prodigy again. Perhaps Viktor has not invited them to the show. Regardless, Yuuri was grateful for their absence, because without them Yuuri’s allies just outweighed Viktor’s. Babicheva and Altin made only two, and if one really wanted to count Yuri Plisetsky, two and a half.

Of course, Mila Babicheva was dangerous enough for two men, but Yuuri had accounted for that too. He’d accounted for nearly everything.

But he did not account for this: Mila Babicheva leaning across Viktor’s place, Viktor himself accommodating her intrusion with an air of only mild irritation, and the young woman smiling sweetly at Yuuri.

“Your sister is quite pretty, Yuuri.”

It was a barb meant to inspire fear rather than annoyance, but Yuuri opted to displayed the latter on his face in lieu of the former. Both feelings bloomed within him.

“And she’s about ten years too old for you,” he replied, performatively bored, though his fingers tightened around the stem of the wineglass. Mila noticed this, and her smile uncurled lazily.

“I’m just stating a fact. Your parents are very lucky.”

Yuuri cut his eyes at her, and at Viktor, who was letting this embarrassment unfold. “I thought the clear moral of this story was to avoid involvement with any more Katsukis, Mila Babicheva.”

“Oh, I’ve taken _that_ moral very dearly to heart, Yuuri.” Mila helped herself to Viktor’s fork and the untouched tiramisu on his plate. “But what is your opinion on those mafia siblings in Rome?”

“That’s _enough_ , Mila,” Viktor snapped, like it was a topic they had discussed before and which Viktor found unfavorable, and the young woman dipped her head deferentially. Her eyes were a wicked challenge as she lifted his plate from his table setting and placed it in front of herself.

“Yes, sir,” she chimed obsequiously. But she did not drop her smile. “But what _ever_ did you do to your neck, Vitya?”

Beside Viktor Nikiforov, Yuuri went very still. This was ridiculous. Dangerous. And his fault. Kissing Viktor, letting himself be so easily seduced and subsequently humiliated, had smacked of memory. The markings left on the back of Nikiforov’s neck, disappearing beneath his collar, were undoubted evidence of Yuuri’s weakness. Mila Babicheva knew it. Viktor Nikiforov knew it.

“Can we just be done with this?” A fleeting moment of confusion passed before Yuuri realized that it was not his own voice, though it was his own sentiment expressed. From a distance down the table, Yuri Plisetsky was looking at him with an indescribable expression that might have been pity.

And this was humiliating. This was unforgivable.

 _Act_.

Yuuri stood fluidly from the table, and Viktor tilted his head back lazily to watch him. Yuuri spread his hands, aiming for arrogance with his posture and his expression. Calmly, he said, “I second that.”

But Viktor drove him backwards several steps when he rose from his seat too, and Yuuri closed his eyes briefly because the yield had been wholly involuntary. He had been so used to bowing to Viktor Nikiforov, even now it was a force of habit.

“Sit down, Yuuri,” he said, calmly, but the edge to his voice was all that mattered. His eyes were icily cold, to match his smile. “You’re going to ruin supper.”

“I’d have liked to see you be brave for once in your life, Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri snapped. “But it appears I’ll be disappointed yet again.”

Viktor said, “I don't disappoint.” Yuuri tipped his head, as if questioning the validity of the claim.

“I’ve had plenty of half-hearted orgasms that beg to differ.”

And this, finally, prompted a bitter reaction. This was an immeasurable blow. Viktor Nikiforov prized his playboy reputation too dearly to allow this slander. To twist the knife further, Yuuri smiled. Nikiforov narrowed his eyes. Behind him, Mila Babicheva leaned back in her chair and laughed.

“I think I’m going to miss you, Katsuki,” she drawled, and Yuuri sneered. This was nothing. This was expected. If Viktor was going to kill him, the least Yuuri could do was destroy his image this completely first. He bowed.

Across from him, Viktor’s lip curled. His fingers slipped into his suit jacket and removed a thin sheathed blade, the handle of which he thumbed contemplatively. “You should be grateful,” he murmured.

“For?” Yuuri was unarmed. The knife Viktor now held was his, stolen back at the Nikiforov estate when Yuuri had been distracted by his own pathetic begging. He felt as if the floor was going to give way beneath him.

Viktor lifted his chin. The curve to his lips was sharp enough to draw blood. “Martyrdom, Katsuki Yuuri. Isn't that all you've ever wanted?”

Full disclosure. That was the game Viktor was playing, had been playing all month. Yuuri did not care for it.

Yuuri drawled, “To be a saint? In this city?” Cool serenity was slipping beneath his skin. Again, gratitude for Minako’s pedagogy flooded him. Katsuki Yuuri was many things, and Viktor was not entirely misguided when he called him a whore, but Yuuri was first and foremost a fighter. He’d learned this verbal sparring from Nikiforov, but Okukawa had taught him the essentials of real fighting a full decade previously. This was Yuuri’s element, his area of expertise, as much as Viktor’s was words and poise and prettiness. None of which would do him any good here anymore.

“What good would sainthood ever do me, Viktor?” Mechanically, he registered that Jean-Jacques Leroy was getting quietly to his feet, that Otabek Altin had yanked Yuri Plisetsky out of his seat and to a safer distance from the brewing violence, that Mila Babicheva had pushed back her chair so she could prop her Louboutins on the table and still cross her ankles, that she was cradling her Glock in her lap and tilting her head with a lazy attentiveness. She caught Katsuki Yuuri’s gaze and waved. “Unless you're planning an image change? Is the devil going to repent?”

“To correct his mistakes, actually,” Viktor said softly, and his finger grazed the switch on the knife. A tic. A tell.

Yuuri smiled. “Oh, I’d much rather he atoned for them first, _anata.”_

The metallic click of the switchblade opening, the subtle noise as it sliced through the air reached Yuuri only after he began to move. The blade whistled above his head, then came down viciously to drive into the space which Yuuri’s throat had just occupied. He wasn't there.

Where he was was too close for comfort, gripping Viktor’s forearm firmly and twisting it over and behind his back, prying the switchblade from his fingers easily as Viktor gasped in surprised pain. Where he was was pushing Viktor Nikiforov so violently away from him that the man stumbled gracelessly into the sharp edge of the table, where he was was snapping the knife closed and tossing it in the opposite corner of the room, hopelessly out of reach.

Where he was was _on top._

Viktor gripped the edge of the table, used it to lift himself back into a standing position, but before he had accomplished this Yuuri had matched him limb for limb, pressing his body against Viktor's so firmly that the other man gasped again. Yuuri wrapped his fingers around his hands, confining them to the table’s edge, and brushed his mouth briefly against Viktor Nikiforov’s neck.

 _“Darling_. How are you going to beat me in a fight when I taught you everything you know?”

“Everything?” Viktor’s tone was too goddamn amused for the position he was in. Yuuri stiffened. He quickly removed his fingers from over Viktor’s, which was a mistake because Viktor grabbed his damaged left hand and it _hurt_ and Yuuri hissed even before Nikiforov flipped him over his shoulder and flat onto the dining table. Which _was_ a move Yuuri had taught him, actually, and Yuuri gasped a laugh to disguise the bitter self-hatred blooming within him. _Idiot_. He was such a prideful moron. “Well. You did teach me that.”

Flat on his back, Yuuri clenched his teeth. The kitchen staff had cleared the table of most of dinner’s evidence, and he had this to be grateful for. But he was half-certain there was tiramisu in his hair. Grasping for poise, scrambling for footing, he sniffed, “Nice execution. I see you’ve practiced that.”

“I take instruction incredibly well,” Viktor replied, too impressed with his performance to appropriately brace himself for Yuuri’s retaliation. He was still smirking when Yuuri slipped off the table, and his smugness slid beautifully into blank shock when Yuuri knocked his head so far backwards his eyes met the ceiling.

“Apparently not so well,” Yuuri murmured, catching stunned Viktor under his arms in a way that was almost tender, then spinning him against his chest and pressing his forearm viciously to his throat. “Or you’d know not to waste a moment’s advantage like that, Vitya.”

He’d already winded him with the punch, and so this hold was nothing revolutionary. Viktor Nikiforov gasped against him, but there was no oxygen in his lungs to begin with, and his attempts at breaking Yuuri’s hold were futile with impending asphyxiation.

But this was no fun. Yuuri would have no chance to relish the realization that he’d lost absolutely everything when it bloomed in Viktor’s expression if he gave up on consciousness altogether. He shoved him away from him roughly, and Viktor stumbled but did not fall. Impressive.

Not impressive enough. Yuuri inspected his cuticles. _“Anata_. Won't you give me something to work with here? This is boring me.”

Viktor swiped the heel of his palm over his newly split lip, smearing blood across his jaw. “Don't call me that,” he snapped, unmasked for a glorious moment and angry. Yuuri appreciated this anger more than he did the predatory satisfaction Viktor usually projected when he was disadvantaged. It reminded Yuuri that he was mortal.

“Why not?” The word itself was submission, a wife-to-husband  
word, and Yuuri using it now when he had Viktor so bested was wonderful subversion. Their power dynamics were suddenly laid bare for any audience that cared to understand Japanese, and to realize that Yuuri had spent too long being second in command to not relish this now. “You used to love it.”

“A long time ago, Yuuri.”

“Plenty of things happened a long time ago. Makes them no less relevant now.”

He’d started calling him anata at twenty-three, and it had been amusing to see such an old-fashioned term applied to their extraordinary situation. Viktor hadn't known the context, of course, hadn't known that nobody in Japan under fifty years old called each other dear anymore, hadn’t known the word was distinctly a relic of Hasetsu and Yuuri’s parents and the exact type of love he longed for here in Petersburg. That had been Yuuri’s secret.

“You have chocolate in your hair.” Yuuri scowled. Carded a hand through his hair and discovered the statement was not untrue.

“Fuck you.” He was blushing. _Damn_. He needed to end this. Quietly, he stepped forward to meet him. “Give me a real fight, Nikiforov. Stop wasting my time.”

Viktor lifted his chin. Mirrored Yuuri in a way that revealed Yuuri’s movements as familiar to him as his own. “If that's what you want.”

Viktor had practiced this. He had prepared for this. Yuuri knew this as much as he knew that Viktor Nikiforov was no longer the opponent he had been in a fight three years previously. Viktor had prided himself on his unpredictability then, but Yuuri had known him, could have matched him blow for blow in his sleep.

Yuuri no longer knew Viktor Nikiforov.

He gasped in genuine surprise when Viktor hit him across the face hard enough that Yuuri saw stars, stumbled into the table’s edge and wasted precious time to blink the dizzying new colors out of the corners of his vision. By the time he was useful again Viktor had regrettably learned from his mistakes, and Yuuri was pinned beneath him. His head slammed against the table, the force of the blow stunning him embarrassingly simply, and Yuuri’s eyes were wide with the realization that Viktor had just bested him with the same sequence of moves Yuuri had just tried to use on him.

And they were a pair of goddamn perfect nemeses, weren’t they?

Then Nikiforov’s fingers tightened against his throat and Yuuri gasped and clawed at his hands for relief and this was not fun anymore not when Yuuri wasn't winning not when the world was softening around him and he could not pass out here he could not panic here Viktor would _kill_ him for it--

“Would it be too much to ask for you to plead again?” The amusement in his tone was a fabrication. Viktor Nikforov’s eyes shone with mechanical loathing. “I do love to hear it.”

In this moment, Yuuri would have pleaded, had he the oxygen to spare. As it happened, there was nothing at all to sacrifice for even a whisper of a please, and so he was saved this embarrassment. Small mercies.

Exhaustion was sighing too quietly into his limbs. Every attempt at breaking this hold was a lesson in futility, every movement promised more earnestly the consequences of this hubris of classical proportions. Yuuri was a fool for challenging Viktor here, in his own kingdom. He was a fool for thinking he could unseat the best in the business, just because Viktor had once promised that he loved him. Yuuri may have been a prince in his own right, but Viktor was still unconquerable.

_Stay awake stay awake look at me and stay awake I love you you damned selfish asshole--_

Yuuri remembered himself dimly enough to register the movement when Viktor dipped his head, to know what to do with this shift in position, and his hands fled from his own throat and locked on his shoulders and pulled him to the side and then Yuuri was above and Viktor was blinking stunned beneath him.

But. Still. Yuuri was gasping and fighting for air and he couldn't _do_ anything to Viktor Nikiforov like this. He stepped back. His hands fluttered to his throat and he blinked the haziness out of his vision and his legs trembled enough that Yuuri was not certain he could keep standing for much longer. Minako’s gift of practiced calm was fleeing him, and what remained was a yawning emptiness that surely heralded a full-on breakdown.

And he was free, and he was supposedly on top, but he was useless. He was bested.

Helplessly, he watched Viktor Nikiforov stand, and saw Mila Babicheva drawl something he could not hear for the ringing in his ears as she lent Viktor her semi-automatic pistol. Helplessly, Katsuki Yuuri witnessed his one-man coup d’etat crumble around him.

But when Viktor trained the gun on his head and his eyes went cold, cold, colder than Yuuri had ever seen and he ordered him to kneel, Yuuri did not. Rather, he smiled beatifically (only because he could manage nothing else convincing) and said, “I only ever wanted us to be equals, darling.”

Viktor did not sound like he cared. “I told you to kneel.”

Frantically, Yuuri’s eyes sought out Leroy, to ensure he was paying attention. This part was imperative.

“So you can shoot me on my knees?” This was borrowed bravery. His last reserves of a false, stolen persona. “I don't think so, Viktor.”

The gun’s safety clicked off. There was no room for doubt, nor for sympathy, in Nikiforov’s expression. Yuuri had never, even in Barcelona, been on the receiving end of this famed iciness.

It was almost, almost wonderful.

_“Kneel.”_

Yuuri tipped his chin. Viktor had stalked closer to emphasize his point, and he was close enough to inspire a nice deep-rooted fear but still distant enough for it to be a death sentence for Yuuri to ever attempt to disarm him. A happy medium.

Katsuki Yuuri said, “No.”

He’d been pistol-whipped before. In Seoul, in Bangkok, in Minako’s Kabukicho office. The sensation of hard plastic slammed against bone was still enough to make him see stars. The burst of pain against his temples coupled with the heavy weight of his heart in his mouth, the tightness in his chest, and the trembling of his entire fucking body was enough to make his legs buckle beneath him.

And Katsuki Yuuri went to his knees.

“It’s better this way,” Viktor assured him. The Glock barrel was cool against Yuuri’s temple. He was going to be executed like a fucking dog. “You're prettier when you're pathetic, anyway.”

Yuuri closed his eyes. It took some effort to reopen them, but he did. He had to. Yuuri was going to make damn sure that Viktor understood to the fullest capacity what he was doing when he did it. He wanted him to see exactly what he was ending by playing these games.

If it was Yuuri’s life, then so be it. Yuuri was not twenty-four anymore, and he knew that death was inevitable eventually. But Katsuki was absolutely going to take Nikiforov with him, if this was how it ended. Here. Now.

Yuuri held his gaze. It required a bit of dizzying effort to do so, since his head was so righteously hazy with pain and terror, and Yuuri feared briefly that his eyes were too unfocused for his expression to be anything but pitiable.

“Viper will eat viper, Vitya.”

Viktor smiled. “Serves us both right.”

Gently, agreeably, Yuuri nodded. The gun barrel jammed deeper into his skull, and it was immediately, irrevocably obvious that this was really how he was going to die. And Yuuri really wished his mother had been more successful in instilling more than a fraction of Shinto spiritualism in him, because suddenly the idea of death with nothing after it was absolutely fucking _terrifying_.

Viktor said, “But you were never my equal, Yura.”

Finally. This was an opening. Yuuri smiled. Tipped his head back farther, and uncurled a dangerous smile that made Viktor falter and withdraw the gun a centimeter. And this was a yield.

“No,” Yuuri agreed amiably. “I’ve always been better.”

The sound of four safeties removed from four respective pistols made Yuuri close his eyes. He sighed in irrefutable relief. _Thank you_.

Above him, Viktor made a sound that communicated both murderous irritation and complete dismay. In contrast, Jean-Jacques Leroy sounded smug.

“Really sorry about this, Viktor. I know it probably doesn't look like it, but I--no, really, I’m kidding. I’m kidding.” He laughed. “I’m not very sorry at all.”

Mila spat, “You son of a bitch--”

“I really don't care for your familiarity, Mila Babicheva.” Yuuri stood, slowly, but he still kept a reasonable distance from Viktor lest rage prompt the other man to do something stupid. Yuuri wouldn’t put it past him. And he’d been battered enough tonight for his own tastes. His head was still spinning. “From now on, you ask my permission before you speak. How’s that?”

“I think you can _suck my--”_

“No, I don't think so.” Yuuri inspected his nails. Risked bodily harm to gloat, and tapped a finger gently on Viktor’s cheek. Nikiforov didn't move, didn't speak. Perhaps this was due to Leroy pressing a German semi-automatic to his temple. Yuuri didn't really mind whether the stilling effect was his own or not; it was simply satisfying to witness him humbled so. “Perhaps we’ll just decree a blanket gag rule and be done with it, hmm? You both talk too much anyway.”

Viktor snapped, “You don't honestly think you can--”

Yuuri hit him. Across the face. Hard enough that Viktor swayed, hard enough that JJ Leroy took a half-step backwards and jerked his handgun away from Nikiforov’s temple fractionally in surprise, hard enough that Yuuri’s fingers tingled and he reminded himself firmly to watch his temper.

“I can do,” Yuuri panted, and he was glorious, he was Petersburg’s Shining Prince again and it was _wonderful,_ “whatever the _fuck_ I want to, darling.”

To illustrate this point, he hooked his fingers in Viktor’s hair and yanked his head down and Viktor’s mouth was hard against his own for several infinite seconds. Yuuri kissed him until resolve bled into desire and Viktor swayed into him and finally reciprocated the kiss tenderly, letting Yuuri lead him into absolute ruination with nothing but a chaste mouth on his. And this was what Yuuri had dreamed of in Fuchū for years, this was what he had promised himself every morning and evening in prison: you will have him again and you will destroy him.

Yuuri pulled away smoothly, and Viktor blinked and almost protested. The whine caught early in his throat, and Yuuri found himself mourning it. Surely, if Viktor Nikiforov could make the likes of Katsuki Yuuri beg, Okukawa-trained Yuuri could do much better. Clearly he was out of practice.

Still, Yuuri smiled. Viktor’s blue eyes were wide wide wide with damning surprise. “Who’s pathetic now, _anata?”_

“That's not--this isn't...” But Yuuri was stepping away from him, stalking to a distance to survey the rest of the room, and he was no longer listening to Viktor Nikiforov. Yuuri was so easily drunk on power, but it didn't matter. He had won.

He made eye contact with Yuri Plisetsky across the table. Otabek Altin shoved himself farther between Leo de la Iglesia--more accurately, Leo’s gun--and the Plisetsky heir, as if this could combat Yuuri’s gaze. Yuuri found his dedication admirable, if marginally distasteful and altogether too familiar.

Viktor had tasted of blood. Yuuri wiped his own mouth casually with the back of his hand before speaking.

“There's been a dynastic change,” he announced slowly. “From now on, this is a Katsuki enterprise.” Yuuri spread his hands. Smiled. “And that means we’ve got a couple of new rules.”

“Fuck you, Katsuki,” Plisetsky spat. Yuuri narrowed his eyes.

“No, I don't believe that’s one of them.” Yuri Plisetsky sneered, and subtly Otabek Altin wrapped his fingers like a vise around Yuri’s arm. Reining him in. Keeping him alive. Really, somebody ought to give the boy a salary bonus. He must work his fingers to the bone with a charge like Yuri.

 _Task at hand_. Abruptly, Yuuri remembered himself, and resumed his agenda.

“The first rule is this.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “All policy decisions go through me. That includes whatever business you perpetrate with your Italians, Babicheva.”

“Oh, I’ll be sure to keep you _updated_ ,” Mila snarled. Then, at Seung-gil: “Don't even _think_ about touching me, you _goddamn creep--”_

Yuuri gave them both cool warning glances. Mila shut up. Seung-gil only blinked. Yuuri turned back to his greater audience.

“The second rule is that you--” He nodded at Yuri Plisetsky. “Start pulling your weight. This pampering is embarrassing. Okukawa Minako could teach you a thing or two about being a proper heir.”

 _“No,”_ Viktor said vehemently, his gaze swinging to Yuuri. “That will not--”

“I didn't request your opinion on the matter, Vitenka.” Yuuri liked the coolness to his tone. It was very Nikiforov of him. “And Minako’s a little busy to bother with our unhappy family, don't you think? I’ll be an acceptable substitute mentor.”

Viktor still did not appear to like this plan. Yuuri decided thusly that he would keep it. He bowed, half-sincerely, to Yuri Plisetsky.

“I’ll be kind,” he promised. A feat, for Yuuri. Yuri expressed his own lack of faith in this statement with a scowl. “We’ll start slow. Nothing like when I was sixteen, I promise.”

Katsuki Yuuri had already been a halfway monster at sixteen. Yuri Plisetsky was not ready for that. But he would learn.

“Third rule.” Yuuri turned back to Nikiforov and tipped his head back playfully, like he was about to kiss Viktor again.

He didn't. He wouldn't. But Viktor recoiled regardless, no doubt to avoid another display of weakness like before. “You take my orders now, love. Let Yakov Feltsman know where we stand.” Yuuri’s fingers traced the line of his own bottom lip contemplatively. It was an unconscious relic of a gesture--one he made himself stop immediately.

“And gather your friends from abroad,” he added. “I’ve got business to discuss.”

And very important business it was. Yuuri smiled, and the flash of fear it inspired in Viktor’s eyes was worth anything and everything Yuuri had ever done. He would do anything and everything to make it show itself, however briefly, again.

Katsuki Yuuri promised himself that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long notes, bc I love to hear myself talk. Feel free to ignore them:
> 
> Disclaimer here, because I don't speak Russian at all, but according to the Pevear and Volokhonsky translations I've read, the nature of some Russian nicknames and diminutives depends on the context. "Vitya" is a fairly basic diminutive, but something like "Vitenka" can be either very, very familiar among friends/family/lovers, or dismissive and offensive when used by people who don't fall into the friendly and familiar category.
> 
> The direct quote referenced here is "Viper will eat viper, and it would serve them both right!" from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, about a murderous father-son duo.
> 
> Another Karamazov quote which almost made it into the final cut was "And you can keep this as a memory--that you kissed my hand, and I did not kiss yours" but this one's not so easy to quote by memory, so it was removed for practicality's sake.
> 
> The moniker Shining Prince, like the Devil of Saint Petersburg, is derived from cultural classic lit. I'm not well versed in Japanese classics at ALL (the most I've read is Murakami, and he's a modern author) and so I haven't read The Tale of Genji, but that's the source of one of Yuuri's public titles. The story's from the 11th century and there's apparently not much plot outside of the sexual exploits of Hikaru Genji (whose name translates to Shining Prince), a demoted Japanese prince born to a concubine. It's considered one of the first classics, and it was written by a woman, Murasaki Shikibu, to entertain courtesans.
> 
> The second title, Emperor Consort, would probably be considered less favorable, but it's more straightforward. In short, it's the title given to the partner of a ruler, and has derivations in any type of monarchy (Queen Consort, Prince Consort, Empress Consort, etc.) The example I know best, and which thus inspired its use in the fic, is Chinese Empress Consort Wu Zhao, who was a favorite concubine of the emperor, then seduced his son after he died, killed her own daughter and pinned it on the current empress, and cut off the hands and feet of her female rivals and drowned them in vats of wine. Then she became empress. It's a mood.
> 
> As always, thank you for kudos and commenting! Feel free to find me on tumblr at fortinbra.tumblr.com too!
> 
> xx


	10. Salome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: I've added end-chapter notes now!

“Well. You look awful.”

 _“Chris.”_ Viktor was feeling snappish. He also might have been on the verge of tears. Viktor himself couldn't quite decide.

“I told you, Viktor.” Despite his apparent best efforts, Chris’ tone was soft. The way he let Viktor fold into him so completely was also incriminatingly tender. “Now look at this mess.”

“I didn't--” Viktor spoke thickly into his shoulder. Definitely on the verge of tears. How embarrassing for them both. “I did everything _right_ , I _did_ \--I don't understand how--”

“He’s good at what he does, Vik. And I believe you fall into his area of expertise, don't you?”

 _“No.”_ It was too vehement for truth. It didn't matter. No matter how prettily said, the evidence--that Katsuki Yuuri had bested him, that he knew Nikiforov too intimately for Viktor to ever be unpredictable again, that Yuuri owned him so completely that Viktor would still fold beneath his will, three years since--was glaring. Both Chris and Viktor would had known it was a lie anyway.

They were not in the Camaro, because Viktor had not driven, and he did not trust Mila Babicheva even behind the wheel of most of his lesser cars, never mind the Camaro. Instead, they were both in the backseat of an orange BMW Viktor had forgotten he owned. Mila had expressed an interest in adopting it on the way to pick Chris up, and Viktor found that he couldn't bring himself to care even if she stole it and subsequently wrecked it. He’d waved a dismissive hand at her when she’d asked, and she appeared to have taken it to heart as an affirmative answer.

Thus, she was in a marginally good mood, and had nothing to remark presently on the state of Viktor Nikiforov, his empire, or the emotional breakdown he was currently nursing in the BMW’s backseat.

“At the moment,” Chris said, and it was evident he was trying his best to be calm and collected. His shoulder was incredibly tense beneath Viktor’s chin. This was childish. This was embarrassing. Viktor felt his cheeks warm with a humiliated blush. “At the moment, we should just be grateful he didn't kill you.”

In the front, Mila Babicheva snorted derisively. The sound made Chris shrug Viktor off his shoulder abruptly, like he was embarrassed of potential association with Viktor’s uselessness. Thusly unanchored, Viktor closed his eyes, collected himself, and rested his forehead against the windowpane instead.

Christophe Giacometti drawled, “Do you have something to add, Babicheva?”

“We should just be grateful he didn't kill _Plisetsky_ ,” Mila corrected, voice saccharine. “Darling Vitya’s proved himself roundly useless by now, hasn't he?”

Viktor felt Chris’ eyes on him, felt the weighted expectancy of a vicious reply to such an insult. But Viktor Nikiforov found he didn't have the energy to defend himself, and simply made a vague hand gesture that might have translated into agreement with Mila’s statement.

Christophe Giacometti tipped his head back and sighed in exasperation with them both. Viktor felt another pang of guilt at having foisted this disaster onto him. It was Chris’ job to support him, but it was not his job to clean up his all messes and reassert Viktor’s tentative authority every time Katsuki Yuuri unbalanced him.

“This is fucked,” Chris muttered, perhaps to himself. “We’re all fucked.”

Mila laughed. “Oh, but Viktor much more than the rest of us, don't you think?”

“Mila--” Viktor began, then pressed his fingers against his temples and sighed. He hadn’t the energy for this type of debate. And he couldn’t deny that Mila was right. That she had been right from the very beginning.

“We’ll figure it out.” Chris said it with the distinct exhaustion of one who knew he would be the one to figure it out, while Viktor sat back and continued to grasp at the dwindling threads of his damned sanity.

“Thank you,” Viktor whispered into his hands. “Thank you, Chris.”

“Of course.” Chris’ hand drifted tentatively into Viktor’s personal space, and this in itself was wrong because Christophe Giacometti did not do things _tentatively_ , especially not when it came to tactility. But perhaps he was merely afraid of Viktor Nikiforov hurting him. Again.

Finally, his hand came to rest on top of Viktor’s, above his knee, and Viktor closed his eyes. Sighed. He knew this was wrong, knew it was cruel to take such advantage of Chris’ friendship, just as ten years ago he had known it was cruel to manipulate him on the basis of Christophe Giacometti’s childhood infatuation with him. But Viktor couldn't help it. He had been taught how to make people fall in love with him, and how to benefit from such weakness, but he had never been instructed on how to make it last. Nor on how to handle the rare situations when Viktor fell in love right back.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into his hand, and then his head fell to the side again and he buried his face back in Chris’ shoulder. “I tried, Chris, I really did. I just--” He paused, to swallow the pathetic half-sob that rose in his throat. “I’m sorry.”

 _Don't apologize._ He knew it, knew this was Chris’ rule as much as it had been Nikolai Plisetsky’s, and he knew that this display was ruining him. He was going to be a self-combusting mess in the next few minutes if he didn't control himself, and he could not face Katsuki Yuuri like that. It would be the death of him. Not to mention it would be incredibly humiliating.

“I know,” Christophe Giacometti said, but his tone was only halfway comforting. Theoretically, Viktor knew he had a right to be angry--Viktor had yanked him from his home and his fiancé back to a city which he knew Chris hated, begged him to correct monumental fuckups that were spawned solely of Viktor’s own stupidity, made this show of maudlin disaster right out of the fucking gate. By all rights, Christophe Giacometti should resent Viktor Nikiforov and his messes with every centimeter of his person.

It still hurt to think so. Still hurt to think that Viktor was only half as skilled at seducing himself compatriots as he was at ruining their lives. Still hurt to think that what he was doing to Christophe Giacometti was just further proof that Chris was justified in keeping Viktor far away from his personal life--in case Nikiforov and company ever decided Chris’ possession of Viktor’s secrets was as dangerous as Yuuri’s ownership of them had been, and decided to off him in a similar respect, at least there would be no loose ends like _family_ with which to be concerned. Like there were in Katsuki’s situation.

It hurt Viktor most to think that Chris had stopped trusting him. Sure, it was logical, on Chris’ behalf. And very smart, strategically. But it was _painful_.

 _You know I would never do that to you._ Viktor wanted to, but could not, promise it. He didn't think Chris would ever believe such a vow anyway. Viktor could not guarantee to even himself that he would not sacrifice whatever necessary to maintain the Plisetsky business. That tithe had been Katsuki Yuuri, once. And Viktor had promised Yuuri the world, then. He had never given Chris half as much.

“I’ll fix this,” Viktor vowed instead. His mouth brushed Chris’ lapel as he said it. “I’ll fix this.”

Chris said, “No,” and Viktor recoiled too quickly. He blinked. Surprise suddenly granted him the mask he’d been so lost without.

“Excuse me?”

Chris looked at him squarely, and his eyes said _finally_. They said, _there is the Viktor I will follow._ They said too, _is that all it takes? Telling you no? What a spoiled child._

“You will not.” He clearly relished giving Viktor orders, finally switching their roles. “I will handle your ex-boyfriend. You have demonstrated sufficiently that you cannot--”

Viciously: “ _Fuck_ you, fuck you _both_ , how _dare_ you--”

And Chris smiled. It was not an easy smile, but it was there. Viktor could have cut himself on the edges.

“Good.” Viktor remembered suddenly that Chris was Plisetsky-trained too. That he had the Nikolai cruelty, undiluted by the Yakov humanity. They were different breeds of the same genus of monster. And Chris could be just as dangerous as Viktor, under the right circumstances. “Remember this. Next time you feel inclined to bow to Katsuki, remember that this is how you will be recorded in history, Viktor. Do you really want to be known just as some yakuza’s fucking _twink?”_

“Shut up.”

“No.” Chris’ voice was heavy with his own accent. Viktor tended to forget his best friend was not Russian, was not his most of the time. No longer. “Not until you recognize how pathetic you are being, Viktor Nikiforov. Not until you become what you know you are, and stop being so afraid of your own goddamn power here--”

“I said _shut up!”_ Viktor did not realize he had raised a hand against him until he felt the sting of the hit, saw the scarlet bloom on Christophe Giacometti’s cheek. And this was vile. This was the second time he had hit him in a month, the second time he had hit him with intentions to _damage_ in his lifetime. Viktor Nikiforov was becoming something he did not want to be, and he did not know how to prevent it.

He was breathing hard. There was something caught in his throat. “Do not.” He closed his eyes. Reopened them. “Speak to me like that. Ever again.”

Christophe Giacometti’s mouth twisted. “But you’ll let Katsuki speak to you the same way? Come _on_ , Viktor. Hasn’t masochism gone a bit stale for you now?”

There were no words for what he was feeling. Only would-be actions. Viktor would not give his hands the purchase they longed for, tight around his best friend’s throat. He curled them into fists to keep control.

 _Monster_. And not the kind abound as an occupational hazard in mafia work. All of Viktor’s friends, colleagues, his ex-lover too, were _that_ kind of monster. Viktor Nikiforov was something worse. A Nikolai Plisetsky type of monster. The only gift his adoptive father had willed him, besides this shambling drug enterprise, had been his rage.

Viktor did not want it.

“Remember this,” Chris said lowly, furiously. The slap had done little outward damage, but his pride was bruised. It would be for a good while. “Remember this feeling, Viktor, and know it is _not my fault._ It’s yours.” His drew his hands into his own lap and became a sharp, forbidding creature. Not a best friend. Not a compatriot. A proper businessman, like Viktor could not dream of being. “Yes, you will fix it. Clean up your own goddamn mess. Then see me with your fucking complaints on how I speak to you.”

There was a long, shattering silence. Then Mila Babicheva laughed.

“You have plenty of contenders for your throne, don't you, Nikiforov?”

Both Viktor and Chris stiffened at the insinuation that Chris would ever dare to try and overthrow Petersburg’s king. For very different reasons, surely--Viktor, at the thought of another loved one usurping him, and Chris, with the memory of what had happened to the last man whom Viktor suspected of traitorism.

“That's not--” Viktor began, as Chris snapped, “Shut the fuck up, Mila.”

Mila Babicheva tipped her head back and met Viktor’s eyes in the rearview. Her expression was too fucking amused for his taste.

“Yes, sir,” she chimed. “Whatever you say, Giacometti.” She held Viktor’s gaze for another moment, and then she winked.

And Viktor did not care for whatever this kind of insinuation was either.

* * *

 

"We didn't discuss this--this was not part of the _plan_ , Katsuki! Do not forget that you are still required to take my orders--”

“It was this, or I died last night.” Katsuki’s voice was smooth over the phone. “Don't give me a lecture on how I ought to save my own skin, Phichit Chulanont.”

“Don't put this on _me_. I’m not responsible for any of this bullshit--”

“But you are. Is it not your job to control me?” Phichit could hear his fucking smirk over the line. “Perhaps you should do a better job of that.”

“I _wish_ he had killed you,” Phichit snapped, thoughtlessly, and then bit hard down on his tongue. Katsuki’s tone dropped several degrees in temperature with his reply.

“Oh, there’s still time for that, I’m sure. But then what happens to you?” Phichit imagined him draped across a desk chair in one of the hundreds of rooms in the Nikiforov estate, inspecting his cuticles boredly. A prince again. Utterly uncontrollable. “Do you think I’d keep you a secret, if it comes to that? I am not that kind, Chulanont. Rest assured that you will die with me.”

“Screw you.”

“You might even make the papers.”

“Katsuki--”

 _“Listen.”_ Katsuki Yuuri’s voice changed shape, and Phichit’s perception of him changed with it. He sounded mildly terrified, and taking extreme lengths to hide the fact. “Listen, Chulanont, because I will not repeat myself. _I did what I had to._ Nothing more.”

“You reappointed yourself as patriarch to the biggest cocaine empire in Europe. That's not bare minimum action, Yuuri. That's insurrection.” A sharp intake of breath on his end of the line, as Phichit realized he had crossed a line. A stony silence on Katsuki’s end confirmed it.

“I do not remember giving you permission to use that name.”

Phichit worried the inside of his cheek between his teeth. He pitched his own voice for unconvincing bravery. “Does it bother you?”

“Does the idea of me snapping your neck and dumping you in a canal bother _you?”_

Phichit frowned. “Threatening me isn't smart.”

“Neither is pretending you have any idea what you are doing here, Chulanont.” Katsuki Yuuri really was unbearable, wasn't he? If he were not so dangerous, Phichit would sincerely consider making good on that desire to smack him. “Let me handle it. You just continue relaying all my activity to Japan and sitting on your damn hands, how's that?”

“What exactly are you planning?”

Katsuki Yuuri made a vaguely bored sound in his throat. Something papery rustled in the background of the call. “I’m going to resurrect myself, I believe. Make a public appearance. I’d like to see something that is not that hideous Fuchū headshot make the papers again.”

“I doubt that's _allowed--”_

“Hm.” He sounded amused. “I don't think I care.”

“Katsuki--”

But Katsuki Yuuri interrupted him, and the clipped sound of his Russian was only as annoying as the lazy reply that was Viktor Nikiforov’s Russian was terrifying.

Suddenly, Phichit Chulanont was much too close to this dangerous business for comfort. He was practically in the same _room_ as the most dangerous criminal in the world, and it was not Katsuki Yuuri. Katsuki, he could handle. Katsuki was on a fucking leash, appropriately muzzled. Katsuki had demonstrated himself to possess some shred of humanity, manifested as concern for his little estranged family. Phichit did not think there was evidence of Viktor Nikiforov possessing any ghost of this same humanity.

It struck him, now, that if this suicide mission actually panned out, that Phichit would have to encounter Viktor Nikiforov in the flesh. That they would exchange brief words and Phichit would read him his rights and the terms of his arrests right before giving Nikiforov his orders to put a bullet in Katsuki Yuuri’s head. And not to miss, this time around.

Phichit did not think he was up for that kind of high level dealing. He could hardly call Katsuki by his given name without breaking out into a nervous sweat, as the situation stood now.

On the Nevsky end of the line, Katsuki Yuuri laughed. It was a distinctly chilled sound. Then his voice swung back into clarity and he snapped a short, “Goodbye,” in Japanese before hanging up.

And that was all. There was no opportunity for Phichit to bid him another warning, to order him to not get himself assassinated before he was due to be so on Phichit’s employer’s calendar. There was no opportunity for Phichit to express any concern, fabricated or not, for Katsuki Yuuri’s wellbeing at all.

It was still morning. The door to his flat was deadbolted, would remain so for the rest of the day. Phichit was too shaken to consider leaving the safety of his Fuchū-funded apartment for a good while.

He splayed his fingers across his face and sighed. Dug his nails into his own skin until he hissed from the sting and remembered why exactly he was chosen for an assignment like Katsuki Yuuri.

Phichit Chulanont was expendable. A nobody parole officer, twenty-four and hardly past his rookie years, not even properly Japanese. He was a handsome but unrelatable face designed to fade into obscurity in the obits, a cute mascot for the papers to wax requiems about--a foreign martyr, a stupid kid over his head, another casualty caught in the Katsuki-Nikiforov crossfire--in the short week after his inevitable murder. Phichit Chulanont was not meant to survive this mess any more than Katsuki Yuuri was. The only difference between the two of them was that Fuchū was probably not rabidly advocating for Chulanont’s assassination. Yet.

This was fucked. He was fucked. Phichit left his phone on the desk and crawled beneath the covers of the unmade bed. It was ten in the morning. There was nothing else for him to do but sit on his damn hands, like Katsuki had said.

He should have gone back to Bangkok when he had the chance. Now it was likely that he was going to die in Russia, within the year, and he hadn't even visited home since university. He missed it, missed the city and the sounds and the food like he had not in years.

Phichit Chulanont was going to die in Russia. He tasted the words in his mouth and had almost come to accept them by the time he fell asleep.

* * *

 

Agrafena Svetlov was younger than her esteem in the papers would lead one to believe. Yuuri liked that. It was reminiscent of himself.

“You've written about me. Before.” Yuuri was standing behind Viktor’s desk. The woman was sitting before it. Yuuri was respectfully keeping his distance; he didn't want to scare Svetlov, at least not too terribly. He suspected his presence alone, partnered with Viktor Nikiforov’s murderous sulk at the window, was still more dangerous than anything else this woman had ever encountered. “I read it. It was a nice piece.”

At the window, Viktor snorted. The woman’s eyes flickered to him in terror. Yuuri smiled with what he hoped was passable kindness.

“Don't mind his mood. He’s vainer than I am, and I don't believe he cared for some of the things you wrote about his legacy.”

“Oh, get _fucked.”_ English, for reputation’s sake. Yuuri responded in kind.

“But we have company, darling.” Yuuri straightened his spine, let the carefully molded mask slip from his face. It couldn't hurt to show this woman who he really was, just for a moment, either. “And I don't remember giving you permission to speak.”

“I’m not your--”

“My what?” Yuuri smiled, tilting his head playfully. “Please, do tell me what exactly you are not of mine, Viktor. Because--” He traced the edge of Viktor’s desk contemplatively. “It strikes me that I own every bit of you now, don't I?”

Viktor narrowed his eyes. Then he turned back to the window. Waved a dismissive hand, as if Yuuri was operating under _his_ jurisdiction. The movement was not convincing. “Finish this game. I’ll have no part in it.”

Yuuri dipped his head. He was smiling a smile too wicked to fairly turn onto Svetlov, and so he eliminated it. Carefully, he righted his glasses on his face. He thought they made him appear less threatening--harkening back to a younger Katsuki Yuuri, perhaps--and had thus opted for them over contacts today.

“Viktor would rather both of us were dead, Miss Svetlov. We’re kindred spirits in that respect, I believe.” He bowed briefly, but not disrespectfully. “Fortunately for us both, I’m now head of this house. And I have a business opportunity for you.”

Laymen were always so terribly meek in his presence. Yuuri had forgotten how irritating being feared became, after the initial thrill wore away. He preferred his due unfailing respect with at least a hint of mild conversation.

But the woman merely nodded. Kindly, Yuuri smiled.

“I’ve become something of Russia’s prodigal son in these past weeks. I’d like for this damn country to finally know it. And I want you to be the mode of that deliverance.” Yuuri inspected his cuticles, then spread his palms to plead transparency. “This doesn't require a permanent spot on my payroll, Miss Svetlov--unless, of course, you wish it to be so. But I’ll warn you that such employment begs certain expectations that this assignment would not.”

“I--” She faltered. Yuuri was hardly a charismatic creature. That was Viktor’s strength, and he was arguably doing his worst to make Svetlov feel comfortable here. He really was suffering some deep-rooted trauma at being called past his prime, wasn't he? How characteristically vain of him.

“You can say no,” Yuuri assured her easily. “I was never as cruel as the rumors said.” At the window, Viktor turned and narrowed his eyes. It was a glorious lie, and both men knew it. But Svetlov didn't have to. “You coming here is no binding contract, and I will not threaten you if you reject this proposal. It’s merely a...business opportunity. With mutual benefits.”

“I don't--” She paused. Looked down at her hands in her lap and shrugged her shoulders unconsciously. Damningly honest. Then she looked up at Yuuri simply. “I like my reputation as incorruptible too much, I think.”

Well. Yuuri hadn't expected to actually be told _no_. Nobody told Katsuki Yuuri no. He hurt perpetrators too much for the habit to have ever taken off.

But he was not Viktor, and he would not make a habit of killing journalists. Instead, he laughed.

“Incorruptible? In Russia? There's no such thing.” He spread his hands. “I’m not proposing that I dictate what you write, Miss Svetlov. Just that you write it. Honest media is so charming; I personally would never suggest that you idealists change your ways.”

Viktor turned and leaned against the windowpane. The afternoon gloom seeping in from outside made his complexion look positively ghostly. He sniffed disdainfully at the scene before him. “You are an unbelievable damned slut, Katsuki Yuuri.”

Yuuri smiled sweetly. He did not spare Viktor more than this sideways glance. “I’m only doing business, love. I can't possibly understand what you're insinuating.”

“Careful, girl.” Viktor tipped his chin at Agrafena Svetlov. “Dealings with Katsuki tend to unravel once he finds you boring. I'd hate to see you tip off a Mikhailovsky balcony one day for your mistakes.”

Yuuri indulged him with a pout. “I could never find _you_ boring, Viktor. Is that what you came to think of me?”

Viktor’s eyes traced the outline of his shoulders appraisingly. His gaze was heavy-lidded with disdain. “Among other things.”

“Hmm.” Yuuri tipped his chin upwards. Blinked slowly. His gaze settled on Svetlov and he smiled abashedly. “Forgive us. It’s a long-winded lover’s quarrel.”

“You're in charge now,” she said, like it had not been obvious from the beginning. Yuuri bowed ingratiatingly.

“A regime change,” he confirmed. “I believe this business needs a prodigal son at the moment anyway.”

“Why did you come back?” Journalists were a fatally curious breed. But Yuuri found the question unsurprising.

“I'll answer that question when we’ve cut a deal, Miss Svetlov.” He stepped back from the desk. It was not coercion, but rather collaboration, this way. Yuuri, despite his grassroots origin, had never been the people’s man. Viktor was the populace’s favorite, and always had been--this, of course, mostly due to his being so damningly pretty. But that would do no longer. Yuuri had to reclaim all of this kingdom if he wished to take back any of his power here.

Agrafena Svetlov considered the proposal, and made a show of doing so, but it was earnestly clear that she would never say no. Yuuri had selected his candidate accurately.

But in retrospect, it was no great feat. Idealists were always proving themselves so predictable. Minako had taught him so, back when he was thirteen.

When Svetlov finally nodded, meek but resolute like only honest people could be, Yuuri smiled. Clasped his hands together and let some of that sharpness slip back into the curve of his lips. The woman blinked, and thus missed the exchange of cut-glass expressions between Katsuki and Nikiforov. Yuuri said, “Excellent.”

“I don't want a full-time job. I don't want to be on your payroll.”

“And that's understandable.” Yuuri shrugged, unoffended. “I wouldn't recommend mixing with our type longer than it takes to line your pockets anyway, my dear.”

“Incorrigible,” Viktor hissed, and Yuuri smiled. Jealousy was a handsome look on Viktor Nikiforov. Though green was not one of his most complementary shades.

“Someone will contact you with further information, Miss Svetlov. For now, Popovich will escort you home.”

“Home,” the woman repeated. Like she had not considered Yuuri would have investigated small insurances like the location of her home. Naive.

“Of course. Whether permanently on our payroll or not, we must keep tabs on our partners, don't you agree?” Yuuri slipped to the window and did not deny his wandering hands the prize of resting on the small of Viktor’s back for far, far too long. For the first time in years, it was Viktor who stiffened at the contact, Viktor who mumbled inarticulate threats under his breath, Viktor who was afraid.

“It's only good business.”

* * *

 

“He looks awful.”

Christophe Giacometti’s hands closed around his shoulders, and Viktor flinched violently. It was the sharpest movement he’d made all day.

“Get out of my house.”

Chris’s grip was not inherently ill-meaning, but Viktor disliked it nonetheless. He shrugged him off and sank further into the sofa cushion. Chris, for his part, did not get out of his house. Instead, he leaned against the sofa and watched.

Katsuki Yuuri was on television, and he did indeed look awful. Possibly it was the sallowness to his skin that suggested a wicked withdrawal from his favored drugs, maybe it was the weight he had lost in the past month which made his suit hang limply from his frame, perhaps it was the sterile white sling that hung from his neck and cradled his shattered arm in front of him. Likely, it was all three, with a healthy dose of Viktor’s own guilt added to the mix. Either way, the sight of him was nauseating. Viktor did not realize he had a hand clamped over his mouth to suffocate any involuntary noise until the camera crept its focus onto Yuuri’s face and Viktor’s fingers seized and dug tracklines into his own cheeks. He hissed in surprise, another from his repertoire of lesser and inhuman traits.

“My dear,” Chris murmured, and his hands gently pulled Viktor’s hair back from his face and he murmured something soft in French and for a brief moment Viktor Nikiforov closed his eyes. “Don't do this to yourself.”

Yuuri was speaking again. Viktor could not understand him without the Russian subtitles scrolling at the bottom of the screen (and what a goddamn tragedy this was too), and so he opened his eyes. He allowed Chris to continue to touch him, and his best friend did not abuse this privilege. His hands were achingly careful in his hair.

“I will represent myself in this judicial trial,” Yuuri was saying, and though he looked a shambles his tone was clipped and controlled. “I will not entertain a government legal representative.”

“That’s smart.” Chris’ voice drifted from above him. “He knows he won't win this. A prison lawyer would embarrass him, and Okukawa would never--”

“Please,” Viktor gasped. Chris fell quiet.

“Right. I’m sorry.”

On the screen, Yuuri smiled. It was an awful thing. Viktor felt that this was certainly some divine punishment inflicted on himself, this inability to tear himself away from the broadcast. But this was all his doing, and he would witness it whether he wanted to do so or not.

“Katsuki Yuuri, you are here to be tried on the account of six counts of homicide and numerous counts of drug trafficking, including the international dealing of illegal narcotics across Japanese borders for several years. How do you plead?”

Yuuri blinked. His expression had taken on a hazy quality. His hand fled to his face, where he pushed his unstyled bangs out of his eyes. Viktor supposed he was not on his prescription medication in Fuchū any longer either, which explained the tremors in his hands paired with the painful smirk. “Was it really only six?”

“That is not an acceptable response, Mister Katsuki--”

“No, no, of course not.” God, he really did look awful. He was trying his best still, grasping at the threads of his poise here, but it was simply not enough. _He_ was not enough. “I will confess to the drugs, but not the homicides. On the grounds of pleading a lesser sentence.”

Softly, Chris’s voice again: “What is he doing?” Viktor leaned away from his touch now. It had become unbearable, watching Katsuki and letting Giacometti comfort him at the same time. He did not deserve to be coddled.

Speaking was difficult with a month of unspoken confessions lodged firmly in his throat, but Viktor managed. He gestured at the television heavily.

“Giving a show, obviously.” God, he sounded miserable. He was so hideously selfish. “It's what he does best.”

“He's going to make a damned fool of himself instead. No judge would allow--not with that evidence--”

Viktor was going to be physically sick. He felt his mouth twist and his fingers seize and he did not recognize his own voice when he said, “I will only ask you once not to speak.”

Chris’ presence behind him became icy. Viktor decidedly did not care.

“Fine.” His shadow, suffocating for too long, vanished briefly. Viktor did not possess the energy to wonder about his intentions, but he regretted not being more firm in his earlier dismissal of his best friend when Chris took a seat on the opposite side of the sofa as Viktor. He crossed his legs, folded his hands, and looked horribly like a businessman. Like he was a juror at this internationally televised trial of the decade. Like he did not know, or perhaps did not care, what this was doing to Viktor. “They're your consequences, Nikiforov. Face them.”

Viktor turned his face to the screen and did so.

“Losing such a plea will still result in a hard sentence, Mister Katsuki.” The judge sounded dubious. It was a justified response--Yuuri would not win on a plea for lesser charges. Concrete evidence of those six homicides was dauntingly stacked against him.

But Yuuri only looked annoyed. “Yes, I am aware of how the judicial process works.”

“Careful that you watch your mouth, Mister Katsuki,” the judge said sharply. “I have the power to find you in contempt of this court.”

Katsuki Yuuri propped his good elbow on the table and folded one hand beneath his chin. His face looked skeletal plastered with such a fractured smirk. “Oh, that will be difficult, sir. I’ve contracted such a foul mouth in my travels.”

The sound of his voice, even speaking Japanese and projected falsely from the room’s speaker system, had drawn the dog. Makkachin’s nails scrabbling on the marbled floors heralded his prompt appearance in the sitting room, and he leapt onto the sofa gleefully before taking note that Katsuki Yuuri himself was not present. The thumping of his tail stopped abruptly, and the happy panting devolved into a piteous whine.

But Makkachin practiced hesitant forgiveness by resting his head on Viktor’s knee, and the action took Viktor pathetically by surprise. Equally as piteously and perhaps even more hesitantly, Viktor ran a finger along the edge of one of the dog’s shaggy ears.

“Katsuki Yuuri.” Whoever this judge was, he was clearly not being paid enough to deal with a yakuza attitude. This was the trial of the decade, and even in his current state it was clear that Yuuri was going to make him work for his televised fame. “Do you then deny video evidence from several sources of you throwing four Kremlin officials from the balcony of the Mikhailovsky Theater in Saint Petersburg a year ago?”

Yuuri tipped his head lazily. “I can't recall any particular event that fits that description. A year is a long time for me to remember something so asinine, and I’m a very busy man. But you can understand that, I’m sure, _saibankan_.” He smiled, the expression horribly saccharine, and the dark bruising beneath his eyes was brought even more harshly to light. Fuchū prison itself may be reasonably humane in its treatment of criminals, but its residents were under no moral obligation to heed this rule. Incidents of fighting had not made the news--Viktor had checked, religiously--but it was obvious by the way Yuuri moved, the way he tipped his head and clenched his jaw and closed his eyes too often, that Viktor’s handiwork was not the only injury that had been inflicted upon his body in recent weeks.

And somehow, despite his own crimes against Katsuki Yuuri, the idea of someone else touching him--hurting him, making him bleed--was absolutely unforgivable. It enraged Viktor Nikiforov, and this emotion was so surprising partly because it was the first thing he had felt that was not guilt in what seemed like a lifetime. Rage, especially on Yuuri’s behalf, was not an emotion which Viktor deserved, but it was a welcome change in scenery nonetheless.

The camera mercifully fled Yuuri’s face, and Viktor was grateful for this assuaging of his own guilt as well as the momentary privacy it granted Yuuri. The world was watching this, and Viktor could not bear the thought of anyone witnessing him in these shambles. Not when he was, truthfully, so much more.

The lens sharpened on the judge when he spoke again. “Then by all means, Mister Katsuki, I’ll enlighten you.”

It looked arguably worse than it had been, projected on a screen in this sterile courtroom, glaring evidence of an undeniably unforgivable type of crime. Viktor had disagreed with Yuuri’s actions and his methods, and truthfully, his removal of Viktor’s Kremlin connections was the foundation of Viktor’s betrayal of him now, but Viktor longed to explain to someone, anyone, in that courtroom, that it was not like that. That it looked worse on camera, that this was just how business was, that this was not evil like they believed.

Even if it was. Even if he was simply reluctant to admit that Katsuki Yuuri was a monster. Even if his own justification of a quadruple homicide was just further proof that there was something very wrong with Viktor Nikiforov, and had been since he was fifteen. Even so.

The image was grainy, but Yuuri was distinct. He was not the type to draw attention when he did not want to, but once in his element, Katsuki Yuuri was positively captivating. Attention gravitated towards him, a trait Viktor had once found insufferably attractive which now worked directly to Yuuri’s disadvantage. The figure in the video was Katsuki Yuuri, and undeniably so.

“Oh.” Despite the language barrier, Viktor would recognize his many masks immediately. Yuuri was not this prideful in reality. Terror was obvious in his tone, if one knew where to look. “I misunderstood, _saibankan_. I thought I was on trial for homicides. But politicians aren't people. I was simply doing the populace a favor.”

“Is that a confession?”

Yuuri smiled. “Does it matter? I’ll be convicted either way.” And it was true. He didn't need to say it, though. The reminder unsettled Viktor too much. He watched Yuuri lean on the table again, and it was only then that he noticed his good wrist cuffed to the surface. Such a thing must infuriate him. Yuuri was adamant about his distaste for being restrained, even in circumstances in which Viktor would find the action recreational. He had always been so.

“Let me tell you something, _saibankan_. Between you and I.” He folded his hand beneath his chin again, the handcuffs providing enough distance to do so with only mild discomfort. “Katerina Khokhlakov, Kremlin advisor on drug affairs, was colluding with two of the most abhorrent men in the drug business--that's me, and Viktor Nikiforov, if you were wondering--in order to line her pockets. Rakitin hadn’t let a tax payment pass over his own desk without taking his own twenty percent share in a decade. Embezzling is distasteful in the first place, but when one presides over the Golyanovo neighborhood? Surely stealing from impoverished people is warranting of a toss over a balcony, wouldn't you say, _saibankan?_ Miusov was always in direct communication with high-ranking Bratva officials in Krasnoyarsk, granting favors and pardons to any prisoner who could offer him the best cut from their deck outside of Siberia. And Verkhovtsev was in the laudable business of selling intelligence secrets to Russia’s political enemies, which--I probably would have done the same for a monthly bonus of six billion rubles.” Yuuri shrugged, then disguised his own flinch by speaking again.

“I did Russia a service, _saibankan_. At least I’ll admit to being a criminal, but those people? Anyone who calls himself a public servant and works with the likes of Katsuki and Nikiforov deserves much more than a quick death in the opera. Do you understand?”

“That does not justify the action, Mister Katsuki. You cannot--”

“If you're going to tell me I cannot play god, _saibankan_ , I'll save you the effort by informing you that I don't believe in such a thing.” Yuuri smiled. “But, entertaining the notion that a higher power exists, I’ll argue that they bear more similarities to myself than to any other person in this courtroom. I may be cruel, but so are the gods of every major religion I know.”

“Do not mock me--”

“I am being perfectly respectful, sir. You will know when I am mocking you.”

Beside Viktor on the sofa, Chris inspected his cuticles. “He could never stop digging his own goddamn grave, could he?”

“No.” It was true. Yuuri was many things, but self-preserving was not one of them.

“Katsuki Yuuri.” Japanese was such a polite language. Viktor had no appreciation for the way Yuuri had poisoned it until hearing this judge speak, all halting honorifics and demure requests for respect. “You are not helping your own case. I would advise you to keep your recreational commentary to a minimum, and we will start from the beginning.”

“Perfect.” Yuuri corrected his posture, squaring his shoulders and tilting his head forward. But the smirk never left. “I love beginnings.” He closed his eyes, and for a moment some other emotion flitted across his face. Its union with the smile, carefully crafted for public consumption, was brief and aching. “Almost as much as I do endings.”

* * *

 

Yuuri had sought to be alone. The sudden realization that he was not was irritating.

“I have no need for a shadow.” Eyes closed, head tipped back against the wall, and yet Yuri Plisetsky’s presence was unmistakable. He simply begged to be fed attention, the need of it following him like a palpable thing. But such was the lot of all child princes. Plisetsky was no more special than the last.

“I don't want to be your shadow.” He was sounding surprisingly level-headed, for himself. Katsuki Yuuri was impressed. He did not show it.

“Hmm. You've suffered a change of heart in these three years then, I gather.”

“Fuck you.”

Yuuri did not smile. But he opened his eyes. The angle at which his head rested against the wall made looking at Plisetsky difficult, and Yuuri did not strain his efforts to do so. Instead, he looked lazily to the exposed ceiling of the gym. He had come here with intentions of forgetting himself, not playing more games. But Yuri Plisetsky had a knack for being both contrary and unavoidable.

“If you've come to ask about tonight--”

“I want to be there.” A resolute, immediate response. Yuuri blinked.

“Good. Then you will be.” Now Yuuri looked at him, and his own expression was plain. “Viktor would rather you weren't.”

Yuri scowled. “Fuck what Viktor wants.”

“You should be careful of how you treat your allies, Yuri. You have fewer than you think.”

Yuri Plisetsky tipped his chin. It was very plainly a move copied from Viktor Nikiforov himself, but Yuri managed to make it appear more petulant than mocking. He had yet to grow into his attitude, and the softness to his face was an additional disadvantage. It was a dilemma Katsuki Yuuri had also faced until his twenties--though sweetness had worked to his advantage then, once he had learned to use it. Yuri Plisetsky appeared to have no intentions of using his deceptive innocence to his advantage.

“Are you threatening me, Katsuki?” Coupled with a resolute step forward, it was almost convincing bravery. But his voice still trembled, barely, and the set to his mouth was uncertain. Yuuri merely met his eyes, and blinked.

“No,” he said, truthfully. “I’m giving you advice. You should heed it.”

“I don't _want_ your fucking advice.” And now his temper gripped him, swallowed him, and Yuuri raised a quiet hand against the anger. Curiously, Plisetsky paused. Dipped his head, and apologized.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and his eyes found the floor, abashed. “I didn't mean…”

“I don't care.” Pushing himself away from the wall, Yuuri stepped forward carefully. When Plisetsky did not verbally protest, he took another step, and another, and made his round in silence. Plisetsky took the appraisal admirably, correcting his posture and lifting his chin and refraining from speaking for the entirety of Yuuri’s study. “You have the capacity for unheeded success, Yuri. I hope you know that.”

Jaw set, teeth ground to splintering messes, eyes fixed at a point above both their heads. “Yes.”

“Stop that,” Yuuri said abruptly, and Plisetsky looked at him in silent confusion. He was so, so naive. “I’m not Nikolai.”

_“Don't--”_

“There are perfectly valid reasons to hate Viktor Nikiforov, Yuri. Your grandfather is not one of them.” Katsuki Yuuri laced his fingers together, then unwound them contemplatively. “I am not trustworthy, but I am invaluable to you. And it is Viktor’s job to keep you alive. Consider this, Yuri, when you are picking sides.”

Yuri’s gaze locked on his, and his fists were bunched at his sides. He would accomplish nothing if he did not learn to eliminate this anger.

He said, “That doesn't make any sense.”

Yuuri still did not smile. But he stepped back, and tipped his head backwards to survey the ceiling. His own voice was admirably calm. “I am going to teach you to be an heir, Yuri. Tonight is going to be your first public lesson, and you are going to hate me for it. Do not burn your bridges.” He inspected the backs of his hands. “You will need me, in the coming weeks.”

“I don’t--”

“You are dismissed, Yuri. I will see you tonight.” He was such a fragile thing, more so than Yuuri had been at sixteen. Surely a result of Viktor’s coddling, but Yuuri suspected there was also something inherently, insidiously good about Yuri Plisetsky. Which was tragically unfortunate. Yuuri had been good too. “And if you would like to begin our lessons again, I am available to do so.”

Yuri Plisetsky met his eyes, and there was no emotion to his expression. Good. He knew this much, at least. He left without response.

* * *

 

“Tickets to the opera.” Rather, one ticket to the opera. Phichit had held it in his hand like it was a vile thing. “I don't like the opera.”

Katsuki Yuuri had said, “I didn't ask,” and continued to make himself at home on Phichit’s bed.

In Katsuki’s defense, there were limited options for seating. The studio apartment was well-furnished and visibly expensive, but it was small. With Phichit perched on the edge of the desk, _Salome_ ticket laid flat in his palm as if he could scrutinize it for Katsuki’s motives, there had been little else for Yuuri to do but sit on his bed. Unmade as it was. Phichit found himself regretting not tidying up this morning. But he could not possibly have predicted that Katsuki Yuuri, famous mobster of Saint Petersburg, would appear on his doorstep this afternoon with an invitation to the Mikhailovsky.

The opera theatre in question was beautiful: crystal drop chandeliers, gilded stages, everything lush and velvet and _old_. Wearing Katsuki’s old suit--”It's bespoke, and it won't fit you perfectly, but it will look better than anything you could insult me with”--Phichit felt like a terrible sort of imposter. He could not understand German, nor could he read the opera’s Russian subtitles, so the plot of _Salome_ was wasted on him. Even his evening program was incomprehensible, and this feeling of being lost only amplified his apprehension at having accepted Katsuki’s offer. At having potentially played into his hands, and having no means of escaping them.

But at least his seat was nice--though truthfully he would have expected nothing less. Katsuki Yuuri may have been a fearsome thing, but at least his work followed a given set of rules. Respect, and concern for reputation too, were givens when one was dealing with Petersburg’s Shining Prince.

And _Salome_ was also what one would expect from the likes of the Nikiforov cult. Though not fully understandable in the original German, Phichit could pull the most Katsuki Yuuri-esque elements from the plot easily. The overabundance of blood and daunting lack of clothing were key points of evidence. Sickeningly familiar, too, were the characters. During a scene in which Salome orders the prophet beheaded and subsequently kisses his corpse, Phichit Chulanont found himself turning to his neighbors and excusing himself in his best, most polite English. Disgust was clawing its way up his throat, and if this was what Katsuki wanted to show him it had been accomplished, and Phichit was leaving now before he was physically sick in the theatre.

Halfway up the red carpeted aisle was he, when curtain call ended and a voice from the stage called him back.

“Oh, please don't leave yet, everyone,” Katsuki Yuuri said pleasantly, in English. “I have yet to introduce myself.”

And Phichit closed his eyes, tipped back his head, and stopped where he was.

The realization that his standing in the middle of the aisle made him doubly conspicuous propelled him forward, and he was slipping back into his row of seats wordlessly without registering his own movements. An aging woman scowled disapprovingly at him, and Phichit made a point to not care. He was losing his damned mind. He was going to lose more than that if he didn't stop drawing attention and making a target of himself.

“I don't feel as if I need to introduce myself. You all know who I am. Made the papers just recently, even. Though the factual content of those articles was a bit flawed.” Katsuki Yuuri spread his hands in a gesture that was almost welcoming, and certainly performative, and bowed. “Katsuki Yuuri is alive. And I have something to show you all.”

Beside him was Nikiforov, and beside Nikiforov was Mila Babicheva. Neither looked half as thrilled as Katsuki to be there, and the sight was particularly disconcerting. Anything that put Mila Babicheva, infamous young witch and Nikiforov’s violent left hand, in a foul mood was surely unpleasant.

To see the three of them together, three-fifths of a dynasty (for Giacometti and Plisetsky were notably absent), was a brutal reminder of how far over his head Phichit Chulanont had become. How unlikely it was that he could survive this. And how foolish he had been to think he and Fuchū had Katsuki Yuuri on a leash. How damned stupid of them.

Because Katsuki as he was here, impeccably dressed and with Viktor Nikiforov at his side (the latter’s displeasure at this position was hardly noticeable if one wasn't looking for it, so perfect an actor was he, and his feelings on the matter even less relevant)--Katsuki like this was a force Phichit had never imagined. Dangerous and beautiful and brilliant and viciously aware of these three truths, and Phichit could not imagine controlling someone like this. Could imagine even less owning him.

And suddenly, starkly, it was terrifying. What he had done. What he had foolishly believed he could do. Phichit Chulanont was less than a martyr. He was just a moron.

 _“Salome_ is one of my favorite operas. I grew up on the Ifukube ballet in Tokyo--the Seven Veils was to me what I imagine Siegfried’s solo was to Russian students.” Katsuki tipped his chin upwards, and his smile was particularly sharp. “In retrospect, I suppose I had an unconventional ballet education. Though, I believe it suits me. Do you agree?”

He extended a delicate hand to Nikiforov, and though the latter did not take it the image was all the more dangerous for the fact. It was clear, even to the least perceptive, that the two were not on their famously good terms any longer. It made Viktor Nikiforov’s small smirk, the gentle dip to his head, especially frightening.

“You? As Salome?” And he spoke English too, playing this game, and Phichit had heard his voice on newsreels and over Katsuki’s phone but to be in the same room was something new and altogether unpleasant. He had a nice voice, not unlike Katsuki Yuuri did, though Katsuki’s was perhaps softer where Nikiforov’s was nothing less than eternally smug. “Yes. I believe it suits you too much.”

“Life imitates art,” Katsuki agreed, as if confiding this fact in his audience, and beside Phichit the older woman whispered something furious to him in Russian. He blinked, and inclined his head.

“I’m sorry?” he murmured, but the woman did not heed him, and Phichit frowned. On the stage, Katsuki was stepping backwards, and Babicheva was striding away and returning with a companion and this was all very clear suddenly, what the woman had said to him and this whole performance and even the calculated selection of _Salome_ as the very opera after which to perform an execution.

Phichit Chulanont was going to witness an execution.

Of course, this was part of his job description, as Katsuki Yuuri’s handler--to eventually witness Katsuki’s own execution--but he hadn't expected opening acts. He hadn't expected to have to steel himself so soon. And he hadn't expected a _beheading_.

The audience had apparently reached the same conclusion as Phichit, and were beginning to express their own very refined panic thusly. Above the growing noise, Katsuki Yuuri said, very calmly, “I read a book about six years ago, in which the devil performs a trick.” The unidentified man was placed before him, and then forced to his knees, and it became evident that his hands were bound behind his back but his mouth ungagged. And Phichit was most certainly going to be sick.

Katsuki Yuuri said, “Viktor, of course, remembers. It was your book. Why don't you remind us?”

Viktor Nikiforov was a showman at heart. Phichit knew inwardly that this course of events was undoubtedly not his doing nor his wish, and yet Chulanont was having a hell of a time discerning so from this performance. Viktor Nikiforov was doing a very good job at making this seem like his own intention. When he spread his hands and smiled kindly out at the theater, he was very visibly in control. How nice for him, to be capable of projecting such a falsehood. Phichit was particularly envious of this ability now.

“Certainly. The devil goes to Moscow, and he performs a magic trick. A black magic show, more specifically, in which he beheads a man and makes his head talk, then reattaches it. No harm done.” Nikiforov tugged at the hem of his gloves, and the showman’s smile slipped a bit. For a moment. “You can envy that effortless control over death, I’m sure.”

“I do.” Katsuki gripped the older man before him by his thinning hair and yanked his head backward. His gasp was audible from Phichit’s seat. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to do such a trick out of order. Semantics, you know.” He released his head, and stepped backwards.

“This is Stepan Likhoyedev, previously an employee of my business. Until recently he was serving a rather cozy sentence as my...department’s replacement. Upon my return to Saint Petersburg, he found it difficult to bow to higher powers and resign from his position. His daughter took it upon herself to attempt to get rid of me on her own--adorable, when one considers the greater men who have tried to do the same.”

At his side, Nikiforov bowed. This self-satisfied movement struck Phichit as unscripted, and Katsuki’s sour expression confirmed his suspicions. He gestured coolly at Babicheva, and she stalked to him. Handed him something that looked like a short, curved sword in its sheath, and stepped back to her place. Phichit discovered distantly that he had been holding his breath, and felt his pulse in his throat.

“What I’d like from you now, Stepan, is just a confirmation of these facts,” Katsuki continued. “I have no need for anything else.”

_“Please--”_

Outside of films, Phichit had never heard a sword being drawn before. It was surprisingly soundless, but the secondary action of the blade slicing through air was not. It sang on its way to Likhoyedev’s shoulder, pausing just before making contact.

“Not what I asked for,” Katsuki said. The pleasantness was gone from his tone now, the playful, theatrical way he had of speaking now replaced with something that was much more reminiscent of the man Phichit had met two months ago, in Fuchū prison. It was easier to understand now that the banter had been a mask borrowed from Nikiforov, when one was faced with this incarnation of Katsuki Yuuri.

“Please, please, _please--”_

It was an awful thing, to see a grown human being cry. Stepan Likhoyedev did not strike one as the weeping type. Even in the grip of a full sobbing breakdown, there was something very _wrong_ about the picture. For this was monsters playing with monsters, and to see one lose--and _weep_ over it--was terribleness Phichit had not considered.

“Styopa,” Katsuki said, almost too softly for intentions to be publicly heard. “Do not do this to yourself. It’s unkind.”

“Please, yes, yes, I worked in your stead, I did, _yes_ , now _please--”_

It was an exponentially more awful thing to see a man beheaded. But clearly Katsuki had experience with such executions, for he moved quickly and with an air of total professionalism. The effect was rather that of two photographs taken at very distinct times, and displayed in succession of one another: in one, Stepan Likhoyedev is in possession of his head, and in another, he is not.

As if suddenly grasping their humanity and the powers of speech again, several people in the audience shrieked. Even more viewers fainted, and toppled over in tandem with Likhoyedev’s corpse. Phichit himself was frozen in terror; though he did not realize it at the moment, it would be several minutes before the feeling returned to his fingers, clenched as they were around the seat’s armrests.

But curiously, no one attempted to escape. Everyone stayed exactly where they were.

For his part, Katsuki Yuuri held the man’s head in his hands, almost cradling it, and his tone was quiet and rueful when he said, “Unfortunately, I can't reattach it. This is the end of the trick.”

And terribly, terribly, it was.

Then he straightened, turning his face out to the crowd, and the casual disgust with which he dropped the man’s head to the stage was sickening. There was blood, clearly visible when he spread his hands, slick on his palms.

“Now go home. Tell your families.” He smiled beatifically. “Katsuki Yuuri is home again in Saint Petersburg.”

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov was much too old to be entertaining relapse. Everything about this need was humiliating.

To keep himself off the ketamine, he haunted his own home. Paced up and down the hallways of the second floor, slammed the cabinets in the master bathroom and the kitchen (empty now, since he had sent all the kitchen staff home in a fit of suffocation early in the evening), revisited the faithful pastime of tearing books off the shelves in the library. Everything was much too loud and close and even his throat was too tight for him to breathe, and if this was what Yuuri felt on a daily basis then perhaps Viktor could sympathize after all.

He stalked to the kitchen again to make himself a drink, and when the whiskey proved unsatisfactory he dumped the entire bottle down the sink. Moved on to something more flammable--he thought maybe gin, though his disinterest in the matter made it difficult to remember the taste or what the label read--and neglected a glass in favor of taking the entire bottle back to his bedroom. Pathetic.

Halfway to his bedroom, however, he remembered his reasoning behind fleeing in the first place, and paused. It was hard enough to avoid drugging himself into unconsciousness as it was, but locking himself in his bedroom with a drink and ketamine so close at hand could only be an addict’s idea of a proper coping mechanism. He perseverated before his own door, then took a swig too fast from the bottle and coughed. Decided that being miserable within sight of his new housemates was preferable to piecing through this night’s voided lack of memories tomorrow morning to discern how much bodily harm he’d inflicted on himself while high on K, and retired to the lower floor.

It would be an easy excuse--and not entirely untrue--to claim simply that Katsuki Yuuri had driven him to drink. Tonight’s fiasco had been nightmarish to endorse, and Viktor’s own performance on the Mikhailovsky stage had been particularly awful.

But Katsuki Yuuri, for his part, had not appeared to care.

“You’re not touching my car with those hands.” Viktor had thrust a handkerchief at his chest, and Yuuri’s fingers brushed his own when he took it. “Get the blood off first.”

“Your car has seen worse,” Yuuri remarked, and Viktor closed his eyes briefly. When he reopened them, Yuuri was carefully wiping the blood from his hands, and the spot of red he’d left on Viktor’s own fingers had dried. Incriminating evidence. Viktor ignored it.

“Now get in the fucking car.” Viktor Nikiforov had become impatient. He had no time anymore for Katsuki Yuuri’s games, nor his new false persona. When Yuuri looked at him curiously, chin tipped upwards and expression mildly amused, Viktor quelled the impulse to shove him into the passenger seat.

“Back to orders, already?” Yuuri murmured, and Viktor scowled.

“Fine. Stay.” He paced to the driver’s side and yanked open the door. “You’ll be back on death row in Tokyo by next week.”

Yuuri appeared to agree, and find such a prediction distasteful, because he slipped quietly into the passenger seat. Plisetsky and Giacometti were also present and seated, and this was a small mercy. Viktor ignored them too.

Until Plisetsky snapped, “That was definitely the most fucked up thing you've done,” and Yuuri hummed a gentle note in disagreement.

“No,” he said. “Definitely not.”

“You _beheaded_ an employee _publicly--”_

“I remember what I did.” Katsuki’s tone was cool, but still calm. He no longer sounded amused. “But it was nothing revolutionary. Public executions are a family legacy, aren't they?”

“That's enough,” Viktor said. His knuckles were white against the wheel.

He saw Yuuri look to him out of his periphery. “Vitya. Don't tell me your morality objects too. It was necessary.”

“It wasn't. You know it wasn't.” Viktor scowled at the road. “He had a daughter.”

“And I don't kill children,” Yuuri agreed. “I still don't see the problem here.”

“Yuuri.” And now Viktor looked at him, and the sudden intensity of Yuuri’s gaze was nearly too much to bear. “Stepan Likhoyedev was the least of your problems. He had a family--”

 _“Nikolai Plisetsky_ had a family, Viktor,” Yuuri snapped. _“I_ had a family. Don't play that card. I know it has no value to you.”

In the backseat, Yuri began, “What--”

“Nothing,” Viktor said, too quickly, and the look Yuuri gave him was a warning. _Cross the line,_ it said, _and he will know._

And Viktor didn't want that. Not ever.

“Regardless,” Yuuri said, “you don't give me orders any longer, and your opinions on how I conduct business are irrelevant. Remember that, and know that this conversation is over.”

And it had been, and the drive home had been suffocatingly silent. When Viktor parked the Camaro, Yuuri shoved open the passenger side and disappeared into the estate. Viktor hadn’t seen him since. Plisetsky had done similarly.

Chris, however, had stayed. He was waiting next to the driver’s side when Viktor closed his own door, but he did not speak. Even when Viktor looked at him, blinked imploringly, Chris simply closed his eyes and sighed.

“Yes,” Viktor had said. “My fault. I’ll fix it.”

Now, however, staring at the bottle of gin (he'd confirmed it by its label; even identifying it by taste was beyond the capabilities he possessed at the moment), he didn't have the first idea how to fix this. And he was perhaps a bit drunk.

Without making the conscious decision to do so, Viktor Nikiforov was up and on his feet. The continuous struggle of remaining upright and steady took much more mental capacity than finding his destination did, and it was perhaps only moments before he found himself in front of Katsuki Yuuri’s bedroom door. He had to lean heavily on the wall to stop his head from spinning, but was still of sound mind and body enough to knock.

“Viktor.” He had not noticed him open the door. Viktor’s eyes widened with the realization of what he had just done. Drunk and dizzy as he was, he would still have to bear these consequences. “What do you want?”

“I--” He didn't know what he wanted. He frowned.

Yuuri’s eyes narrowed. “You've been drinking.”

Viktor gestured vaguely. “It was this or ketamine,” he said truthfully. “I’m trying to be an adult about it.”

“Go to bed, Viktor.” Yuuri began to close the door, and foolishly, Viktor shoved his hands between the door and the jamb to keep it open.

“No-- _wait.”_ Common sense, and the fleeting thought of what it would feel like for Yuuri to break his fingers in the doorway, made him remove his hands. “I wanted to talk.”

“Not while you're drunk.”

“Yura.” _Traitorous_. Viktor clawed at his own face for a moment, furious at himself for this concession. “I’m sorry, I didn't mean to--”

“I'd advise you to stop speaking while you still have your tongue, Nikiforov,” Yuuri said coldly. Viktor flinched. His mouth moved of its own volition.

His hands fluttered softly in front of him, and even the tipsy exasperation in his own tone was gentle. “Aren't you--aren't you _tired_ of this yet, Yuuri? This isn't what you are.”

Yuuri’s expression was righteously furious. His jaw tightened, and he spat, “You have no _right--”_

“Yes. _Fuck.”_ Viktor pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

Yuuri blinked. He tipped his head to the side a bit when he looked at Viktor, and the action brought his features into softer light. He looked twenty-four again. He looked like something Viktor could be in love with.

He thought about saying so, but was spared the impossible task of making the words work outside of his brain by Yuuri stepping backwards and shaking his head. Brusquely, Yuuri said, “You need to go to bed.” He was wearing his glasses, and brought his hand to his face to push them up the bridge of his nose. It was damningly young of him. “Please, Viktor.”

“I…” Helplessly, Viktor looked at his hands. “I don't think I can help…” Staying sober, he wanted to say, but he was having trouble vocalizing it now. But that was his concern, and somehow he had thought Katsuki Yuuri of all people could help him with it. Even though addicts didn't help other addicts. And monsters didn't help other monsters either.

“What?” Exhaustion was softening his edges, and that old accent was slipping back into his voice. It had been so long since he’d heard it that Viktor had forgotten how much he missed it. But Yuuri caught himself on the edge of a vowel, and corrected himself. Regrettably. “I’m very tired, Nikiforov. Please don't waste my time.”

He must have scrubbed the blood off his hands when he'd gotten home. Katsuki Yuuri’s hands were so impeccably clean, it was almost believable to imagine the events of this evening were a dream. Viktor had never made a habit of being terrified of his partner, before, but he thought now that Katsuki Yuuri was nearly as monstrous as Viktor was. And that was too much for this moment.

Yuuri brought his own hand to his mouth, and his thumb rested on the swell of his bottom lip habitually. After a beat of silence, he realized the action and began to pull his hand away, and Viktor caught it thoughtlessly in his own. Splayed his fingers and checked for any residual blood, any scarring or cuts or _anything_ that would identify Yuuri as the flawed, dangerous creature he was. But there was nothing.

Before he could continue his analysis, Yuuri snatched his hand back violently and Viktor flinched, waiting for the blow. But it did not come. When he raised his eyes to Yuuri’s again, the other man was shaking with fine tremors. Yuuri stepped backwards and cradled his hand to his chest, and his expression was calculatedly enraged.

“Touch me without my permission again, Nikiforov,” he hissed, “and I will kill you next on that Mikhailovsky stage.”

Words rose unbidden within him, and intoxication gave them fruition. Viktor knew he was damned at soon as he thought them, but there was no helping the matter. He was an inhibitionless drunk.

“That's a lie.”

Yuuri’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly he was too close for comfort. Viktor took a few hasty steps backwards, but it was too sudden for his limited coordination, and he stumbled. Realized he was falling, and braced himself heavily against the wall beside the door. Yuuri looked up at him ferociously.

“What about that do you think is a lie, Viktor?” he snarled. “What made you suspect I was not being completely and _utterly_ sincere?”

And if Viktor was going to die at least he could make it memorable, and so he laughed. It was a tad sloppy, and he was still at a disadvantage here, but the sound unbalanced Yuuri a bit too. He had not expected to be matched, no matter how precariously.

“I could always tell when you were lying, Yuuri,” Viktor whispered. “That, at least, hasn't changed.”

“Fuck you.” Yuuri stepped backwards, conceding. “Sober up. Go to bed. _Grow up,_ Nikiforov, and learn your place.”

“I was never very good at that,” Viktor confessed, and then Katsuki Yuuri shut the bedroom door in his face.

* * *

 

“Have you ever known something like this?”

Cocaine made Yuuri’s veins quiver beneath his skin, and perhaps this was was a bit concerning, given that veins did not have the tendency to _quiver_ when one was sober, but Yuuri couldn't quite bring himself to mind. This was probably also due to the cocaine.

The sun was rising over Saint Petersburg. Neither of them had slept, and the effects of such lack of self-care was beginning to show. Viktor Nikiforov looked tired. Yuuri was starting to feel like every cell in his body was undergoing entropy as the same rate, and this sensation was also mildly unpleasant.

But he smiled. And he laughed. And he said, “The sunrise, Vitya? I’ve seen it.”

“No no no no.” Viktor had the tendency to speak very quickly when he was high. Yuuri found it endearing, when he did not find it difficult to understand. “The _city_ , Yuuri. We own this entire city. Have you ever _thought_ about that?”

“Minako owns Tokyo. I’m familiar with the concept.”

“Fuck Minako.” Yuuri did not have the energy to be affronted. When Viktor wrapped a hand around his wrist and pulled him to his feet, tugging him giddily to the balcony, Yuuri hardly had the power to stand. He leaned against the balcony railing, until Viktor pulled him roughly into his shoulder. “She may have Tokyo, but until _you_ do, Yuuri, that can't ever compare to this. So _look.”_

And Yuuri looked. And he laughed.

Viktor Nikiforov looked at him then, and though dark shadows were sinking beneath his eyes and his pupils were too dilated for any illusion of sobriety and though Yuuri had seen him prettier and cleverer and _better_ than this countless times before--he committed this moment to memory and did not let it go. They were princes. They owned Saint Petersburg. And no one was ever going to take that from them. Yuuri would kill them first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, god, I'm alive and I'm okay and all that, just very busy. Thank you for both expressing your concern for me being what the fuck off the grid for four weeks as well as giving me time to get my life in order. I really appreciate it, sincerely. 
> 
> Second, If you've ever wondered what any piece of my writing looks like prior to editing, this is uh...what it looks like. I wrote a third of this in a day and did absolutely NO editing before posting so...it's messy. My apologies. Next installment will be much more polished.
> 
> I wrote a companion piece to this one a few weeks ago, and it's also posted on my account here on AO3. (That's also where I explained that I was dropping off the face of the earth for a bit.) Also, a-bluebirds on tumblr made a moodboard for this fic (I'll link it at the end, since I can't embed hyperlinks atm), and it's pretty and wonderful and I love it very dearly, so please feel free to also appreciate it.
> 
> As far as informational notes go, I didn't record very much. Salome is an German opera (and also a ballet) based on a play by Oscar Wilde, which is in turn based on the murder of John the Baptist in the Bible. I read the play several years ago and thus can't give a shiny review, but every incarnation of the story is pretty nasty. The plot as I remember it is that Herod's (step?)daughter becomes infatuated with the prophet, demands that he kiss her, and when he rejects her, she convinces Herod (by performing a strip tease, of course) to have him beheaded. Then she lowkey makes out with his severed head. It's what you would expect from Wilde, I suppose. The Seven Veils piece is the operatic and ballet rendition of this strip tease, and Akira Ifukube is a twentieth century Japanese composer who wrote his own ballet based on the Strauss opera.
> 
> The book referenced in the execution scene is The Master and Margarita again (I'm predictable), and the scene alluded to goes pretty much exactly as described. The devil arrives to Moscow and sets up a magic show, beheads a man as part of his act, makes him speak, and then reattaches his head. 
> 
> Thank you for being patient with me, and thank you for your comments and kudos! Here's that link too: http://a-bluebirds.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%3A-ivory-and-gold
> 
> xx


	11. Drawn to the Blood

It had been several weeks since Katsuki Yuuri had slept in his own bedroom. Months since he had slept alone, and eternities since he had fallen asleep without this.

“And this one?” Viktor Nikiforov’s touch was ruinously gentle for a man of his reputation. His fingers trailed the outline of an image over Yuuri’s shoulder blade to the edge of his throat, and Yuuri sighed into the sheets. “What do flowers mean?”

“Depends,” Yuuri murmured, bemused. They were his tattoos, of course, and he did not have quite so many that he forgot what images were permanently inked on his body. But it was easier, nicer, to hear Viktor say it. “What type of flowers?”

“Pink ones,” Viktor replied softly, and took the hard edge of bone in his mouth, ran his tongue over the twisting path of the tattoo’s branches. Yuuri laughed, but the sound asphyxiated into a gasp when Viktor bit down, not shallowly, into his shoulder.

Yuuri repeated, a bit breathlessly, “Pink ones,” and Viktor made a quiet, pleased sound. “Sakura, then.”

“Mm. If you say so.”

“I do.” His shoulder was not going to make it to the morning unmarked. Neither, Yuuri was sure, would his hands. Viktor had a particular infatuation with them. “Sakura--” He panted. “Sakura mean life. Short life.”

Hands slipped over the ridges of his spine, and Viktor’s lips brushed the curve of his ear when he murmured, “Short life. I don't quite understand.”

Katsuki Yuuri closed his eyes. He lay on his stomach, with his face turned to the side, and Viktor dragged a finger against his outturned cheek contemplatively as Yuuri spoke. “Cherry blossoms. They bloom for a week. In Tokyo, it's in April. After that--”

“They die.” Viktor Nikiforov’s voice was amused. His index finger came to rest on the swell of Yuuri’s bottom lip. “You plan on dying early, my dear?”

Yuuri smiled gently. His eyes were still closed, and with each passing moment speaking because more difficult. He was oh so tired, and this felt so much like home. “I don't,” he said against Viktor’s fingers. “Plan. On dying.”

“An admirable goal,” Viktor agreed. “Me neither, if I’m being honest.”

This was how Yuuri’s nights passed now. In Viktor Nikiforov’s bed, discussing the meanings of his tattoos in drowsy voices, Viktor marking the pale strips of skin between ink with teeth and fingertips. He had lived in Russia for nine months.

“When I was younger,” Yuuri mumbled, as Viktor lifted his head from the bedsheets and extricated Yuuri’s right hand from beneath his cheek gently. “When I was a kid, we’d celebrate hanami in the spring. It was more work than fun, at the onsen. Tourist season. But--” He broke off as Viktor kissed each of his fingertips, his mouth soft against the sensitive skin. Yuuri allowed himself to sigh.

“Don't let me distract you,” Viktor murmured, as he closed his mouth around Yuuri’s index finger and bit down lightly on the first joint. Bones shifted around the pressure, but the sensation was not unpleasant. Yuuri's other fingers moved of their own volition, twitching against Viktor Nikiforov’s cheek. He did not protest.

Instead, he laughed.

“No, of course not.” But he had forgotten what he had been saying, and had to take a moment to recollect. Viktor took advantage of this lapse to brush his lips against his knuckles, to work at the delicate skin between his fingers with his teeth. Yuuri drowsily tapped a nail against his flushed cheek. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Tell me about home.” And he must have grown bold, because this was a well-known sensitive topic with Katsuki Yuuri, wont to bring on moody sulks and rash events of injury. But perhaps Yuuri had brought this onto himself, by mentioning hanami.

In any case, in the light of this new question and the sleepy warmth of this bed, Yuuri couldn’t fathom why he had ever minded being asked such a thing.

“I haven't,” he began, and Viktor rested Yuuri’s hand against his cheek and held it there with his own. Closed his eyes, and that characteristic, ever present alertness dissolved entirely into gentle entreaty. Yuuri found it horribly endearing. “I haven't been back to Hasetsu. Not since I was seventeen.”

“But you remember,” Viktor mumbled, and Yuuri felt the words in his palm. “Of course you remember.”

“Of course.” How could he not? “Home isn't a thing one forgets.”

“Forgive me.” Viktor smiled against his hand. “I forgot you were a sentimental thing.”

“I am not.” But he was sighing, tracing the line of Viktor’s cheekbone with the edge of his finger, and he was. He was a very sentimental thing.

“You’d like my parents, I think. My sister would like you.” Were they not the people they were now, of course. In another life, featuring another kind of Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov. “We used to fight about the boys she’d bring home, and how she would smoke in the house. Later, we’d fight about me.”

“You were the problem child,” Viktor murmured, and Yuuri laughed.

“I suppose so.” Yuuri caught his own bottom lip between his teeth. “But only in later years. I was good, at the start.”

Sleepy curve to his mouth. Viktor’s hand was dream-heavy on Yuuri’s own. “Mm,” he agreed gently. “Being good. What's that like?”

“Boring.” It was a halfway honest answer. Yuuri was dangerously comfortable here. “And--nice, too. I forgot how nice it was.”

Viktor Nikiforov hummed a gentle melody against his palm and said, “Show me.”

And Katsuki Yuuri dipped his chin and captured his mouth with his own and Viktor Nikiforov sighed and hooked his fingers in Yuuri’s hair and this was gentle and soft and _good_. In a way which Yuuri hadn't known for years.

And quietly, with an aching gentleness, Yuuri showed him what it had been like. To be good.

* * *

 

“This gala of yours.” Yuuri was perched on the edge of Viktor’s desk, his heel hooked on the expensive molding on the piece’s bottom edge. Viktor tried not to let this casual disrespect infuriate him. “It's the same night as the ketamine distribution?”

“Yes.” Yakov had taught him, as a child, how to curb this Nikolai Plisetsky temper. Viktor was finding it laborious to remember how, at this moment. Perhaps it had to do with counting. “For obvious reasons.”

“Yes.” This smirk was new. Yuuri had been smug before, when the occasion called for bravado. But never like this. This was the self-satisfaction of an apex predator.

Definitely the counting strategy. Viktor tried it: _Ten._

“I want the paperwork on this. All your communications with the Italians, the Koreans, everyone. I want Giacometti’s records. On this desk, by tonight.”

_Nine_.

Viktor narrowed his eyes. “Good for you. You know where to find it.”

“Oh.” Yuuri traced the edge of the desk lovingly. Viktor had bought it in Morocco. It had belonged to an Alaouite prince once, centuries ago, before being relocated to a heroin kingpin’s estate in Marrakesh. “I suppose I was unclear. That was an order, Vitya.”

_Eight_.

Viktor stood. Strode to the window and placed a tight fist against the glass pane. Gently.

_Seven_.

“I’m not a dog. I don't take orders. And I don't fetch things for you, Yuuri.”

Behind him, Katsuki Yuuri laughed. “When,” he drawled, “did you come under the impression that you don't take my orders, Viktor?” He tapped a nail against the desk surface. “I recall that being precisely our arrangement here.”

“I didn't agree to it.” _Six_.

“And this is not a democracy. Your agreement has no impact on the matter.” Viktor heard him stand, but he did not turn. Doing so would only admit to the combined terror and rage choking him. Doing so would give Yuuri the advantage.

He continue to stare through the glass as Yuuri stepped behind him, his fingernails digging viciously into the heel of his own palm. Imagined what it would feel like to slam Katsuki Yuuri against this window, to see the pained surprise bloom in his expression, to make _him_ afraid.

It would not be worth Yuuri’s retaliation, certainly. _Five_.

Yuuri’s fingers grazed his shoulder, and Viktor hissed, “Don’t--”

“How’s the sobriety faring?”

The sensation of holding one’s heart in one’s mouth was not unfamiliar to Viktor Nikiforov, but it was remarkably unpleasant.

_Four. Four four four--_

“Please don't,” Viktor Nikiforov said to the windowpane. His teeth ground themselves to the nerve. The words were not so much a plea as an established boundary.

“You know, Vitya,” Katsuki Yuuri whispered. The taunt fell softly upon his neck. “You know, even if you could have killed me, you never would have been rid of that.” His fingertips branded themselves into Viktor’s shoulder. “That influence runs too deep.”

_Three_.

“You talk like a fucking addict,” Viktor snapped, attempting to shake him off his shoulder. Fruitlessly.

“Of course.” Let go let go why would he not _let go--_ “Takes one to know one.”

“Fuck you, Katsuki.” He had been sober for two years. Excluding a few minor upsets, Viktor Nikiforov had been perfectly respectably since Katsuki Yuuri had left his life the first time. This was not a fair accusation.

But Viktor could hardly defend himself without reverting to patheticism. And so he said nothing.

Katsuki Yuuri took this as invitation to continue, and he stepped primly to Viktor Nikiforov’s side. Blinked serenely out the window. His damaged hand, knuckles still bruised yellow and green from the last fight he’d had, drifted carelessly before the glass. It was raining.

“It’s almost romantic, do you agree?” His tone was still mocking, but it had taken on a dreamy edge. Viktor blinked, and concentrated carefully on resisting the way Katsuki Yuuri’s voice always softened something within him. Unconsciously, he had begun to lean into him. He stopped. “In a fucked up way. Definitely karmatic. You try to kill me, and in return I ruin your life.”

“Is that what you're doing?” Viktor murmured. His throat was tight. Self-control was a falsehood. _Two_. “Right now? Ruining my life?”

“Oh, Viktor.” Yuuri turned to smile at him. He squared one shoulder against the windowpane and leaned calmly against it. “I haven't even begun.”

“I hate you,” Viktor hissed, and all this suffocated rage within him was alive again and he was going to _hurt_ him, he was going to kill him and he would make Yuuri regret everything he had done here, repercussions be _damned--_

But Katsuki Yuuri kissed him.

_One. One one one one one--_

And Viktor Nikiforov had run out of numbers.

Surprise robbed him of that anger for the briefest moment, and Viktor made a helpless sound against Katsuki Yuuri’s mouth and his eyes were wide wide wide. This was not what he had intended. But, in this fractional second, it was what he wanted.

“Yuuri.” It was very difficult to speak, not only because Katsuki Yuuri’s mouth was on his but because Viktor’s brain had suddenly shifted to autopilot and there was little to be practically done but forget about the consequences of this moment and reciprocate. This. To reciprocate this. “Yuuri--”

“No.” Katsuki Yuuri pulled away to place both hands on his face and his palms were rough and Viktor could describe from memory the pattern of scarring on the backs of his hands and god he loved his hands. “No talking.” And then he resumed kissing him, and Viktor willingly complied.

He had forgotten, over the course of these two months, that Katsuki Yuuri could be gentle. That he had been gentle, once. Katsuki Yuuri had been soft and lovely and had felt things other than anger, before Viktor had ruined him. But he remembered now.

He remembered because Yuuri’s fingers were twining in his hair and though he pressed Viktor against the floor-to-ceiling windowpane there was nothing coercive about the movement. Viktor himself, in fact, had been the one to encourage it. To yield to it.

Previously, he had not known what to do with his hands. But here they were, cupping Yuuri’s face, and they fit so perfectly against his jaw and the hollows of his cheeks that there was no doubt this was good, this was what was meant to be and it was _holy--_

And like all holy things, it quickly became vicious.

Katsuki Yuuri’s fingers hooked into his scalp and wrenched his head back and the sound Viktor made was much more animal than human. His hands had fled Yuuri’s face with this new development, and Yuuri was no longer kissing him but holding him there against the glass, throat taut and exposed and pulse wild and his entire mind and body very, very afraid.

“Yuuri,” he gasped, forgetting Katsuki’s declaration that Viktor would not speak. “I--”

“You do not kiss me like you hate me, Viktor Nikiforov.”

Viktor’s shoulder blades were aching against the windowpane and he was finding it very difficult to breathe which each passing second in this position. Yuuri had a hand against his throat, and though he was applying minimal pressure it was enough to rob him of precious oxygen. Viktor remembered now that moment in the library, when he had threatened Yuuri with his own knife, drawing blood from beneath his ear, and wondered if reciprocation was now Yuuri’s intention.

With some measure of strain, he replied, “Neither do you, actually.”

Katsuki Yuuri looked at him simply, and his palm pressed deeper into his trachea. Viktor Nikiforov choked, coughed. Tears sprang to his eyes.

“Because you always believe it,” Yuuri said slowly. And of course. Viktor had been so foolish. To believe that Katsuki Yuuri could ever be what he had been before, to believe that Viktor deserved that, that he _wanted_ that. This foolishness was certainly going to cost him.

“You were always so easy to please, Viktor. Must be because you don't use your head.” Breathing was a concentrated effort. Conscious thought was impossible. The crown molding at the corners of the walls writhed in his blurry vision.

“Yuuri.” _I can't breathe._ For some reason, he thought this fact had gone unnoticed. Believed that stating it would make his plight more sympathetic. Not that it mattered, if he lacked the air supply to speak the words into existence.

_Please._

Viktor Nikiforov closed his eyes. He was tired. Too tired to be panicked or angry or any other emotion which could be defined as rational and human in such a situation. Lack of oxygen was as heavy a sedative as anything synthetic with which Viktor had numbed himself in the past decade. He should have attempted such a thing much earlier in his adult lifetime.

“I want that gala information, Viktor.” His voice was a faraway thing. Even in Viktor’s mother tongue, there was something strange and foreign about it. Though perhaps this was just another mild effect of his brain gleefully shutting itself down. “And that is an order. Tell me you understand.”

“I--” God, he was _trying_ to tell him. He was. It was not Viktor’s fault that the best he could formulate was this: _“Please.”_

_I understand. I understand. Please, Yuuri. I understand._

The look Yuuri gave him was one of scathing disgust. But he let him go.

Viktor Nikiforov was falling before the memory of Yuuri’s hand on his throat had left him, and his head knocked hard against the windowpane and his hands were already wrapped around his own throat when he went to his knees.

He was going to bruise. He always did. Blood was always so eager to be shed and seen, when it came to him and Katsuki.

“Fuck you,” Viktor choked, impressively, but Yuuri was already stepping backwards. Viktor watched his shoes retreat to the desk, heard Yuuri hum contemplatively and fuck around with something on his desk. Ancient wood shrieked a testament to proper craftsmanship, and Yuuri removed something from the desk’s topmost drawer.

“Oh, Viktor.” Yuuri turned the item over in his hand. Viktor raised his gaze and caught a flash of gold between his fingers. “Cute. I gave mine to a nurse. In Spain.”

“I wouldn't…” Viktor panted. His throat ached. His surroundings churned around him; he was certainly going to be sick. “Wouldn't have...expected you to...keep it.”

“No.” Yuuri flicked the gold band onto the desk’s surface carelessly. “But _you_ did.”

“S’different.”

Katsuki Yuuri looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes and a twisted mouth. “Addict,” he sneered. Viktor felt something lurch in his stomach. “You’ll get off to this too, won't you?”

It was too much to admit to the truth of such a thing. Viktor brought his fingers to his bottom lip and noted with detachment the way they trembled. “I don't--”

“Give me that paperwork, Viktor. Spare me anything else.”

“Yes.” His mouth tasted of copper. His shoulders shook.

Katsuki Yuuri laughed. The sound make Viktor start. “So you do take orders after all.” Viktor Nikiforov watched him pluck the gold band from the desktop and slip it into his pocket. It was no furtive movement. Yuuri wanted him to see, wanted him to witness this theft, and that very sentiment was obvious in the set of his shoulders and the curve to his mouth. This was a power play. “All it takes is a little persuasion.”

Viktor Nikiforov closed his eyes. Listened to Katsuki Yuuri leave the room, and then slid to the floor so his cheek and temple rested firmly against the hardwood flooring.

Katsuki Yuuri was going to kill him. Katsuki Yuuri was going to kill him, and it was going to be humiliating and painful and everything Viktor Nikiforov deserved.

He really wished he would hurry on with it.

* * *

 

Three years ago, Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov had not shared a ring size. Now, the thin gold band fit nicely on Yuuri’s fourth finger. He twisted it compulsively.

_I gave mine to a nurse. In Spain._

He was a moron. He was only lucky that Viktor Nikiforov was an even bigger moron than he. Katsuki Yuuri had not been taught to be a gambling man, and this was therefore an unfortunate development.

Everything about this damn game was a gamble.

_You do not kiss me like you hate me, Viktor Nikiforov._

A calculated risk. That's all it had been. And it had paid off, mostly. Yuuri told himself so, over and over again: Viktor Nikiforov was afraid of him, and this was good.

But taking the ring had not been a part of the plan. Yuuri had done it at some other creature’s behest, surely, because he could not remember now why he had thought taking it would be any semblance of a good idea. He had no use for a wedding ring.

Less use, in fact, than he had had for one three years ago. At least back then, it could have served as a reminder. Now, Yuuri didn't need a reminder. He had Viktor Nikiforov himself to plague him everyday.

He couldn't quite remember giving his own ring away. He had been very dizzy on morphine at the time, and the nurses hadn't seemed to understand that Yuuri did not want them to put him under anymore. Possibly because he could not speak Spanish, and a steady intravenous flow of benzodiazepines had made attempting an entreaty in English near impossible. Also possibly because they did not care what Katsuki Yuuri, international criminal, cared about being repeatedly sedated for the nurses’ own safety.

“Really wish you’d...stop with that.” How eloquent. He was a goddamn genius. The fluorescent lights made his eyes hurt, and he shut them irritably. “Like to be awake at some point.”

“Be grateful you can be awake at all,” the nurse hummed gently, and Yuuri blinked. So he had managed English. How impressive of him. “And be glad you are not sober with that.”

She had gestured at his arm. Yuuri had forgotten about the damage. He may have also forgotten that he possessed an arm--shattered or not--at all. He certainly couldn't test its existence physically, since there was no feeling remaining in the right side of his body.

“V’got a high--a high pain tolerance.”

The nurse smiled. She was older than him. Not old enough to be his mother, perhaps, but close. “Not that high, dear.”

“You'd be--” He had to pause to recollect. Thinking was a superhuman feat. He disliked drugs when he was not the one administering them. Yuuri knew his preferred dosages, and anything that removed this much time from his long-term memory was not a drug of choice anyway. “You’d be surprised.”

The nurse hummed again. She didn't appear to be feeling very threatened. Katsuki Yuuri hypothesized this had something to do with the way his wrists were secured to the hospital bed.

“It remains for your own good, Mister Katsuki,” the nurse assured him gently. Yuuri really hated that turn of phrase. “You hurt yourself last time we weaned you off of it.”

“Didn’t.” Truthfully, he couldn't remember the last time he'd been off the drugs. Couldn't remember if such a time had ever existed. Katsuki Yuuri didn't even know how long he’d been here in Barcelona.

Too long, certainly. Long enough that days had stopped bleeding into each other and had ceased to have meaning at all. Long enough that Yuuri couldn't remember the absence of this cool liquid seeping beneath his skin, couldn't remember when his eyes were not heavy and when things hurt and when he was capable of thinking coherently for himself.

“How long--”

“Four days,” the nurse replied automatically. “You’ve asked every time I’m here.”

_Christ_. Four days. Viktor would be back in Petersburg by now. Yuuri had clearly been left to rot.

“Can you--” Whatever this cocktail of sedatives they had him on, it worked quickly. Yuuri fought drowsiness tooth and nail. “Can you help me? With something?”

“Sir--”

“There's a ring...a ring on my left hand.” He closed his eyes briefly, then found it impossible to reopen them. “Want you...to take it.”

“Sir.”

“Keep it. Pawn it. I don't care.”

The sound of the nurse taking a step forward. “Sir?”

Yuuri attempted to lift his hand, to draw attention to the offending jewelry so he could finally be _rid_ of it, but found such a feat unthinkable. He was so _tired_. “Engagement ring. Don't want it.”

“Mister Katsuki, I cannot--”

“S’not evidence. Would've…would've already taken it if it was.” From his perspective, this was irrefutable logic. He couldn't understand why she hesitated. “S’not a bribe either. Just don’t want it.”

He did not feel the nurse lift his hand off the mattress, nor the careful removal of the golden wedding band from his ring finger. His mouth tasted of cloves. He was never taking a sedative again.

“Thank you,” the nurse whispered. Yuuri understood. Plain gold though it was, a ring like that was visibly expensive. Perhaps two paychecks’ equivalent in euros. Yuuri couldn't even remember how much it had cost him.

“Advise you not to use my name. When you're selling it.” His speech had become an embarrassing mess of English, Russian, and Japanese. He couldn't differentiate between the three anymore. They were all his, one way or another. They would all betray him equally, given the right circumstances and potent mix of drugs. “He’s not very forgiving of that...that sort of thing.”

“Yes. Sir. Thank you, sir.”

The benefit of morphine, even Yuuri could admit, was the nothingness it granted. He slipped beneath the waves of it, soft and forgiving, and dreamed of darkness.

And twenty-seven again, Katsuki Yuuri pressed his knuckles to his mouth. The ring was cool against his upper lip.

Something within him was hungry. It was the only explanation for what he had done here--taking the ring, hurting Viktor, kissing him. Something about Katsuki Yuuri ached and gnawed and made him do stupid things for the thrill of feeling. Feeling anything at all.

Yuuri did not care for it. And he did not want to feel anymore.

In the privacy of his bedroom, cross-legged on the king-sized bed, Yuuri removed the wedding band from his fourth finger and placed it gently on his tongue.

The metallic taste of gold spread in his mouth, and this was Viktor’s ring and the hungry thing within Yuuri imagined it tasted like him too, like one-hundred proof and mint and chemical cologne. And the gnawing inside him did not stop, but it quieted.

_You will get out of this alive. You will._

The thought was comforting in its blind optimism, and Yuuri repeated it to himself again and again as he got up from the bed and slipped dreamily into the bathroom.

_You will get out of this alive. You will. You will get out of this alive._

Though this had not been his room previously, though he could not remember if anyone else had ever inhabited this bedroom, the cabinets were predictably stocked. They appeared to cater to Yuuri’s specific needs as well: Xanax and Valium and other prescriptions which he had never been written. He selected one at random and twisted off the cap.

He had to remove the ring from his tongue to take the pills, and he did so carefully. The parasite inside him objected to this change, and Yuuri felt a flare of irrational emotion before the aching in his chest began again gleefully. Katsuki Yuuri was a hollow thing, and thus the perfect vessel for monsters and drugs and empty wanting. He had always used one of those things to quell the other two.

_I’m never taking a sedative again._ What an idiotic thing to vow, especially high as Yuuri had been then on hospital anesthesia. He took two Valium now, for good measure.

The ring he slipped back on his left hand. Viktor had told him that was where Russians wore it before marriage. After vows, it transferred to the right. Yuuri was damned if he was going to wear it on his right hand now.

He braced himself against the sink basin and promised, _You will get out of this alive. You will get out of this alive. You will end Viktor Nikiforov, and you will get out of this alive._ But something about the mantra left a bitterness on his tongue. Yuuri settled for silence and study in the bathroom mirror of his new stranger’s face.

The high took a while to creep in. Valium was not Yuuri’s preferred poison, for the sole reason that it took its precious time to dissolve into his bloodstream. But eventually the angles of his face softened in the mirror’s reflection, eventually the sharpness in his gaze mellowed and swapped itself for sleepy haze and this was _good_ this was fine he would get out of this alive but for now.

For now, he was going to sleep.

* * *

 

Viktor had knocked. Viktor had knocked quite a bit, and he had grown a great deal weary of it.

Rationally, practically, he knew he should have left these priceless files of incriminating evidence on his own desk for Yuuri to find whenever he thought fit to return to pressing business matters. Rationally, practically, Viktor knew that fucking around outside Yuuri’s bedroom door in the early evening would only invite a reprise of this afternoon’s violent exchange. But he could not help it.

If he was going to be a servile dog, if he was going to play fetch, the most he could do was be as obnoxiously inconvenient about it as possible.

He didn't mean to force the door. Or perhaps he did. The ethics of such a situation were hazy, and he didn't think he really cared about them. In retrospect.

He laid his shoulder against the door and pushed, and since the door was unbelievably, unexpectedly unlocked Viktor Nikiforov nearly found himself facedown on the floor in Katsuki Yuuri’s presence for the second time today.

But not quite. He caught himself, and the curses that escaped him were quiet and controlled.

_Unlocked_. Yuuri had grown foolhardy. And much too smug.

Viktor had wondered, while whittling away his time pounding on the door outside, if Yuuri was in his bedroom at all. But he had left a light on, and the yellow glow had bled beneath the door, and it was not like Katsuki Yuuri to be as careless as this.

But it was not like Yuuri to be as stupid as _this_ either. In the center of the bed, halfway undressed but with no bedclothes pulled about him, Katsuki Yuuri was asleep.

He was asleep and Yuuri had always been a light sleeper and instinct made Viktor backpedal before he remembered the five minutes he had spent at the door, dreaming himself up a death sentence with the noise he had been making. If Yuuri had slept through that--uncharacteristic as it was that he _could_ \--he would sleep through anything.

The paperwork he had brought was stacked primly on Yuuri’s desk before Viktor reconsidered. Perhaps it was unwise to so obviously reveal that he had come uninvited into Yuuri’s room while he slept. Perhaps it was incredibly stupid to taunt him so.

He had the files bundled back in his arms within a moment, was halfway convinced that he would simply bring them to his own study like he had been ordered, would close this door quietly and deny that he had ever been in Yuuri’s room at all this evening, when a thick folder slid out of his arms and spat its ample contents on the floor. The whispery sound of paper against endless more paper was catastrophically loud.

Viktor swore against clenched teeth. Katsuki Yuuri, for his part, did not wake.

And this was peculiar. This was damningly tempting. It occurred to Viktor Nikiforov that if there was ever a divine opportunity to kill Katsuki Yuuri, this moment was one.

He left the upturned file where it lay. The rest of them he placed carelessly back on Yuuri’s desk.

The way Yuuri slept was achingly familiar to him, even now. Yuuri had entertained the tendency to fold inward on himself, even when he had not slept alone, and he appeared not to have shed this habit in the past three years. Despite this, there was no tension to his shoulders, no poise to the way his fingers curled beneath his throat and against his chest. His face was expressionless--and almost kind for it. Gentleness, more so than iciness, had always been complementary to Katsuki Yuuri’s features.

Viktor Nikiforov took a step back.

Morbid fascination gave way to the unsettling knowledge that this was _wrong_. Damning, even. Breaking into Yuuri’s room with the intentions of being an inconvenience, or even with intentions to assassinate him, were very different situations than this. There was no justification that was not humiliating for what Viktor was doing now, which was plainly, nothing at all.

_Leave_. He wanted to. But he could not bring himself to do it and he was not brave and when his fingertips grazed Katsuki Yuuri’s bare shoulder it was on no conscious effort of his own.

_Leave_.

His skin was cool beneath his fingers and this brought unpleasant memories to the forefront of Viktor’s mind. He thought about Katsuki Yuuri’s overdose much too often for any self-respecting shrink to not consider it a traumatic experience. Probably. Possibly at fault for his ruined self now, but Viktor hadn't seen a shrink since before he had killed his father.

_Tell me the truth about what you want._

Because Yuuri would not have kept Viktor alive if it was not for a very good reason, and Viktor did not believe any lingering romantic feelings held any foundation on the decision at all. Yuuri may not have been as heartless as he tried so hard to be, but he was not a simpering idiot either. He was not lovelorn; he had never been.

His back and his shoulders were a map of old, deep-rooted pain. Old pink flesh wounds, crisscrossing the stretch between his shoulders, this one here cutting dangerous close to his spine, this one ragged and torn and cut by a weapon which was clearly lacking in professional craftsmanship, this one almost half of a meter in length. There was something beautiful about them, if only because they were Yuuri’s.

Something inside Viktor longed to touch them too. He didn't.

Horribly, fruitlessly, he imagined how Katsuki Yuuri might beg with Viktor’s teeth on those scars. And again, he took a step back.

_You don't want this. You don’t._

Also horrible. Also fruitless. The very need to promise himself such things was incriminating. Was guilt, in and of itself.

_And even if you did want it, you wouldn't deserve it._

That was better. That put it in some perspective.

_Leave_.

And finally, he found the courage, the self-control, to do so. He abandoned the files where they were, stacked on the table and scattered on the floor, and did not care what the consequences of such would be. He fled, and closed the door softly behind him.

On the bed, Katsuki Yuuri’s fingers curled a bit tighter against his throat.

* * *

 

**Katsuki Yuuri Alive in Saint Petersburg**   
_by Juichi Nakazawa  
Read more_

**The Resurrection of Russia’s Shining Prince**   
_by Elizaveta Tverskoy  
Read more_

**What The Mikhailovsky Execution Means for Russian Crime Policy**   
_by Sergei Koznyshev  
Read more_

**Prodigal:  
The resurgence of a Bratva family, and what is to come.**   
_by Agrafena Svetlov_

_(The following article contains graphic descriptions of violence and disturbing content.)_

In a world-class Saint Petersburg opera house this week,   
patrons of Richard Strauss’ Salome witnessed a beheading.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say the audience was witness to two beheadings. There is an execution written into the opera’s script, which was performed flawlessly by the Mikhailovsky’s leading prima donna, and there was a very real execution which bloodied the stage after curtain call.

It has become inessential to write such news, so ubiquitous has it become, but for the sake of transparent journalism we will report on it anyway: Katsuki Yuuri has returned to Russia.

Barely a month after Russian media had sensationalized his decried impromptu execution in Japan’s Fuchū prison, Katsuki Yuuri has proved himself very much alive. And he has also proved himself very much unafraid to remind this city of his hold over it as well.

This is a hold which extends not only to the city of Saint Petersburg, but within the Plisetsky house itself. The Mikhailovsky execution, as media has colloquialized it, was little more than the beginning of a new era. Katsuki Yuuri, if his performance at the opera house and what he has confided in anonymous reporters hold any truthful foundation at all, is no longer the Emperor Consort of the house on Nevsky Prospekt.

He is the Emperor.

_ Click to continue reading _

* * *

 

“Yakov is still upset with me.”

Christophe Giacometti was turned away from him, gazing contemplatively out the window. But the amusement bleeding into his tone was a relief.

“Imagine that.”

“I suppose it's justified,” Viktor Nikiforov said quietly, testing the climate for jest. Chris still did not look at him, and he did not laugh. But he became no cooler either. It was a start.

Yakov Feltsman had been very cold, in the past weeks. Viktor was used to these periods of iciness, which almost always came on the heels of a public testament to a younger Viktor’s stupidity. Usually, the thaw came before long, and the cleanup of Viktor Nikiforov’s mess began subsequently. But Yakov was being stubborn, was leaving Viktor to clean up for himself this time.

Lilia’s response had borne a bit more heat. Viktor couldn't remember the last time Lilia Baranovskaya had slapped him--perhaps when he was fifteen--and he resented being dealt a child’s punishment now. The insult still stung.

Viktor said, carefully, “He’ll grow tired of it. He did the same thing when I cut my hair.”

Now Christophe Giacometti turned to look at him. The full length window, a tempered Wright work of colored glass, saturated the room with reddish light.

“You don't need me to tell you this is more serious, Viktor, than when you were nineteen.” His voice was soft. Viktor Nikiforov rocked gently on his heels.

“No.” He didn't. Still, he tugged at his collar in embarrassment. “It's going to rain.”

Chris nodded. He was no longer looking at Viktor, but past him. He looked tired. “All night.”

“I’m sorry.”

“S’fine.” He closed his eyes. “It's not as if I’ve never done shipments in the rain.”

“I can put someone else on them,” Viktor offered. “Lee, or Popovich. I’d rather you were with me all night anyway.”

Christophe Giacometti swayed softly. He braced himself against the wall. “With all due respect, Vik, I don't think you have that authority anymore.”

“I can--” _Try_ , he was going to say, but how pathetic would _that_ sound? He couldn't bring himself to utter it.

“It’s fine. Really.” Fingers splayed against his face. It was a very familiar gesture--one of Viktor’s own. He and Chris were so alike; this fissure between them had grown physically painful. “Your bruising is showing again.”

“Oh.” Viktor’s hand drifted to his throat. “I wasn’t...I wasn't trying to hide it.”

“No?” Chris looked back out the window. “That's stupid of you.”

A sigh. “Chris--”

_“What_ , Viktor?” Christophe Giacometti placed the back of his hand flat against the pane. “What can you _possibly_ say--”

“It's not as if this isn't justified.” And he’d said it. That was all. Chris’ eyes narrowed.

“No,” he agreed quietly. “No, I suppose we do deserve it.”

It was a wonderful word, this _we_. Viktor had forgotten how he had missed it, had missed hearing it applied to Chris and himself as if they were a team until now. Even if it was simply this acknowledgment of guilt that brought it about. He was grateful.

“I--”

“You'll have Mila to watch you. Warn her not to get too preoccupied with the Italians, and you'll be fine.” Christophe Giacometti placed a hand against his own forehead tiredly. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Okay.” Then he said, “You should get some sleep. Before.”

It had begun to rain. Gently still, yet the percussive sound of rain on the windowpane was loud within the room. The weather would not remain this tame.

“Okay.” Christophe Giacometti nodded. He laughed, too. “I suppose it’ll end soon anyway. For better or for worse.”

“Don’t be morbid,” Viktor murmured. “Please.”

The rain crashed hard against the window, and the room was red.

* * *

 

The gala, at its origins, had been Viktor’s idea.

Yuuri was perhaps nineteen at the time, still Minako’s, languishing in a boring university in a grey American city, when news of the lavish new lifestyle of the Plisetsky heir had reached him--by Yuko’s handiwork, of course.

She had been in Seoul then, interning under a geondal woman who ran Chil-Sung-Pa fight rings for a living, and customers had brought her eyewitness accounts of the glittering, wasteful mess that was now the Bratva’s largest and most powerful criminal house. Yuuri had loved the stories then, back when the closest he had ever been to _lavish and glittering_ in Detroit was the occasional fraternity house, where intoxicated boys with craft store glitter smeared on their faces offered him rejected sexual favors for bumps of cocaine.

So he had entertained high expectations when he had attended his first gala at twenty-one, and he had not been disappointed. Back then, Viktor Nikiforov had not make a habit of _disappointing_ in anything he did. It was admirable of a crime lord, and even moreso of a lover.

And tonight Katsuki Yuuri would entertain similar intentions. He had not been bred to disappoint either.

“You won't wear gold?”

Admirable, how he did not start. Viktor Nikiforov looked at Yuuri, leaning casually in his bedroom doorway, with an air of coolness.

“The head of the house wears gold,” he informed him. Serenely.

Yuuri said, “Ah.” That was him, now. But Yuuri had never worn gold to a gala. “But it suits _you_ so well.”

Viktor set something down on his desk too firmly; the sound nearly made Yuuri flinch. Carefully controlled fury reflected in the twist to his mouth, the tilt to his chin.

“Yuuri--”

“You will wear gold, Viktor.” Yuuri made himself smile briefly, then pushed himself away from the doorframe. His fingers, inexplicably, had begun to tremble. “I insist upon it.”

“Somehow I can't bring myself to care what you insist upon, Katsuki Yuuri.” The object he had set against the desk, a thin compact of flecked gold leaf, was still curled in his hand. Yuuri watched it, and not Viktor, with interest.

“Really?” he murmured. He remained haunting the doorway. “It strikes me now that is all you care about, Nikiforov.”

“Get _out.”_

Yuuri stayed where he was. “I used to help you with that, didn't I?”

“I said--”

“There's no need to repeat yourself,” Yuuri interrupted smoothly. “I heard what you said.” And he stepped forward.

Viktor Nikiforov took a step back, a perfect mirror image. “This is _my_ room.” How petulant. Yuuri narrowed his eyes. He was close enough now to place a hand on the surface of Viktor’s desk.

“And yet,” he drawled, tracing a whirl in the wood pattern, “you seem to have no moral objection to coming into _my_ room when you are not invited.”

Viktor lifted his chin. He seemed to be under the firm impression that Yuuri still found his height intimidating. He did not. Regardless of height, Viktor Nikiforov went to his knees just as well as Yuuri did. “You left your door unlocked.”

“Yours was open.”

His hand closed around the compact and withdrew it from Viktor’s hand. Viktor allowed him to do so.

Yuuri said softly, “Let me help you.”

“I don't…” But there was nothing to say. Yuuri waited patiently for a few eternal seconds, was careful not to look too earnestly at his face while he did so, and finally-- _finally_ \--Viktor Nikiforov nodded. Sat at the desk quietly, and tilted his face upward. His expression was calculatedly blank. “Fine.”

_You're an idiot, Katsuki Yuuri._

He was. But Yuuri didn't care.

Silently, he opened the compact, wet a brush in a shallow bowl beside him in the desk, and dragged it through the twenty-four karat gold. Paused, conscious of Viktor Nikiforov’s suspicious gaze on him, and said coolly, “I’ll need you to close your eyes, Viktor.”

Viktor Nikiforov closed his eyes.

It would be so easy, to hurt him again. A large part of Yuuri wanted to. Viktor bruised easily, and the markings Yuuri had left below his jaw had not yet faded completely. It was tempting to conjure more, just to remind Viktor that nothing between them had--nor would--change.

He didn't.

Instead, Yuuri braced the side of his hand against Viktor’s face and painted a swath of twenty-four karat gold across one eyelid, to the ridge of bone beneath his temple.

This had been a stupid decision. Stupid of Yuuri to offer, stupid of Viktor to accept, stupid of them both to allow the other this close and not expect bloody or otherwise messy results. Yuuri cursed himself profusely.

Beneath his hand, the edge of Viktor’s face was flushed and warm.

It was impossible, perhaps, to do this and not immediately, reflexively, recall the several years Yuuri had done it before. Really, that desire to remember was what had driven him to demand Viktor wore gold in the first place, and though this was a thing he would never admit to anyone besides himself--he did not dislike it. The remembering.

When he was twenty-two, Yuuri had painted Viktor’s eyes with gold and his own with carmine red, drawn the crushed foil across Viktor’s eyelids with his thumb and traced the line of his jaw with the excess.

When he was twenty-three, he had kissed the gold from his eyes, and his own lips had been marked with the evidence for the rest of the night.

When he was twenty-four, Viktor’s mouth at the gala too had been smeared with red, deeper than a wine stain but brighter than fresh blood.

Yuuri had attended no gala when he was twenty-five.

The brush threatened to snap between his fingers, and Yuuri withdrew for a moment to recollect. Perhaps wary of his intentions, Viktor opened his eyes again and watched Katsuki Yuuri practice deep breathing for several seconds too long.

“Finished?” he drawled, and it was mocking. Yuuri sneered to match.

“Not quite. Don’t speak.” He took up the brush again. Carefully repeated the same simple action on his other eyelid, and wasted no time in placing the brush firmly back on the desk’s surface. Yuuri closed the gold foil compact with a definitive snap.

“Done.”

Viktor Nikiforov blinked at his reflection in the gilded mirror on the wall. After a moment, he nodded affirmatively. “Good.”

Yuuri snorted derisively. He stepped backward too quickly. “Glad it earns your approval.”

_What do you want? What do you want, Katsuki Yuuri?_

He didn't know. He didn't _know_.

He realized too late that he was watching Viktor Nikiforov with bright eyes and a too earnest expression; even more embarrassingly, he flinched when Viktor blinked up at him and smiled.

“You don't seem to be working very hard to ruin my life at the moment,” Viktor remarked wryly, and Yuuri backpedaled frantically. Relied on sheer rage to protect his wounded pride, with questionable results.

“There's still time,” he snapped. His fingers were trembling again. “Don't flatter yourself, Nikiforov.”

“I’m doing no such thing.” He was still smirking. Yuuri briefly considering hitting him, then discarded the idea based on the potential damage to his handiwork. “I’m just drawing the obvious conclusions.”

“Fuck you.” As soon as he ran out of wit, Viktor had won. Threats didn't hold any sort of weight in this game. Viktor cared about words and their prettiness; the many creative ways Yuuri could make him bleed didn't concern him in the slightest.

And so Katsuki Yuuri was leaving, leaving without smashing the mirror or scattering the gold leaf or closing his fingers around Viktor Nikiforov’s throat like he so wanted to, because doing so would only be further admittance of his loss. He simply. Left.

Viktor Nikiforov watched him go.

* * *

 

“You are not being careful, Viktor.” Yakov Feltsman’s voice was surprisingly gentle when he was at his worst. Viktor loathed the kind of conversation that this tone required. It always left Viktor Nikiforov distinctly unhappy. “I told you to be careful.”

“I am.” Viktor rubbed gentle circles on his temples. Yuuri had been in the process of soothing away his headache when Yakov had come calling; the pain had returned with a vengeance since. “I am being careful.”

“No.” Hungrily, Viktor envisioned the action, like the mere thought of Yuuri’s hands on his face could cure all ailments. The imagined feeling of cold fingertips resting gently beside his eyes was wonderful, though the action in terms of headache relief proved fruitless. “Vitya. You know what I mean.”

“I do not.” Irritably. In his defense, it was a late time to come calling. Viktor had been quite comfortable in bed when his old mentor’s presence had been announced. “Though I’m sure it can wait until the morning.”

“Vitenka,” Yakov said softly, and Viktor snarled.

“If you are going to scold me then do so, Yakov. But not speak to me like I am a child.” He was nearly twenty-six. Such things had grown tired.

Yakov asked, “Katsuki’s in your bed now, isn't he?”

Ah. So this was what he had done wrong.

He wondered if Yakov had seen the wedding bands.

Instead of a rage, Viktor’s eyes merely narrowed. “At the present moment?” he drawled, inspecting his cuticles. “Or is that a question with a more general timeframe?”

“Vitenka.” He sounded genuinely aggrieved for him. This pity was unbearable. “You promised--”

Yes. He had promised. When he was about fourteen. There was something about coerced teenage vows that struck Viktor as an invalid method of binding contract.

“Nothing I am doing in my personal life is hurting the family, Yakov,” he said. His voice had become clipped. The space in his head behind his eyes throbbed.

“An _Okukawa_ , Viktor. You don't think that will hurt us?”

Viktor snapped, “You could have made this argument two and a half years ago, Yakov. Perhaps then I would have listened. But it has gone on too long to suddenly decide this deal is bad business.” His mouth twisted into a scowl. “Go home.”

Across the empty space between them, Yakov blinked.

Yuuri had been holding his phone when it buzzed. His voice was soft, still pitched for coaxing Viktor into sleep. “It’s Feltsman. The staff let him in.”

“Mm.” Viktor had buried his face in his chest. Yuuri’s fingers were light and cool against his scalp. “Tell him I don't want to see him.”

Yuuri had laughed, and the hum of his voice had reverberated, not unpleasantly, in Viktor’s skull. Viktor sighed, and tucked himself tighter against his chest. “I doubt he’s that early deterred.”

“He's not.” Another sigh, this one distinctly annoyed. “But it’s always worth a try.” And so Viktor had gotten out of bed.

Now, Yakov frowned. Annoyance was creeping into the tilt to his head and lines to his face. “Viktor. You know I’m right.” Too quickly, he captured Viktor’s wrist in his hand. Viktor flinched. “Look at this. This is not _careful_ , Vitenka.”

So he had seen the wedding bands.

Viktor wrenched his wrist from his grip. His face was flushed, though he didn't know exactly what he had of which to be ashamed. “Don’t touch me.”

“Vitya.” Yakov pinched the bridge of his nose in exhaustion. “Vitya. I know you think--”

“I am not fifteen,” Viktor snarled. “I am your employer. Use my fucking name.”

“Fine. Viktor.” Viktor Nikiforov pressed the heel of his palm to his temple. The onset of this migraine was becoming particularly brutal. “Completely disregarding the fact that you are a _public figure_ and currently running our reputation through the mud--”

“How _dare_ you--”

“Shut up.” Yakov’s tone had progressed past stern, had quickly become angry. “Shut up, and let me speak. In addition to fucking our reputation, you seem to be under the impression that anything Katsuki says to you is sincere. And that makes you a moron.”

“It’s been _two years,”_ Viktor hissed. “Two years, and now you think you have to authority--”

“He's an Okukawa, Viktor! Not only that, but he’s the _heir_ to the entire enterprise in the east. You know Okukawa Minako’s reputation, and you flatter yourself to think Katsuki ending up in your home and your bed is because he _loves you?_ Don't be childish.”

Blood in his mouth. “I don't want to talk about this.”

“I don't care,” Yakov snapped. “You need to hear it.”

“No.” No, he didn't. He really didn't.

He didn't, because Viktor had harbored these same suspicions for two years. He didn't, because he _knew_ all this, knew it as well as he did that this midnight conversion with his old mentor would plague him for weeks because it was _true_. Katsuki Yuuri was an Okukawa, and the Okukawas did not marry for love or pleasure or anything but money and power. Viktor Nikiforov was a lovestruck fool, and yet he didn't care.

“I was previously under the impression that you could take care of yourself. I made this visit for Yura’s sake, and not yours, Vitenka.” Yakov appraised him coolly. “But now I see you're entirely incompetent when it comes to anyone who shows you the slightest bit of attention. Katsuki must be ecstatic to know you're a complete moron.”

“I’m not discussing this.” Viktor shook his head, again and again. “I’m not discussing this, tonight or ever again. Get out of my house.”

Yakov said quietly, “This is not your house.”

_“Fuck_ if it isn't, Feltsman,” Viktor snarled. “I killed for it.”

“And yet.” Yakov rose to leave, collecting his coat from where he had draped it over the chair. His mouth was thin. “You do not deserve it.”

Viktor Nikiforov did not see his old surrogate father out. Rather, he stalked upstairs, shed his clothes, and fell asleep with Katsuki Yuuri’s fingers pressed to his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I'm being entirely honest with you, there's bit of an unorthodox updating schedule ahead. I have midterms sporadically until the beginning of November, so though I wanted to be back on the two week update schedule after this update, I regret to say every three weeks is more likely until I get my life on track again. Unfortunate, but please don't mistake my absence for me abandoning this project. I'm still working on it as often as I can!
> 
> I have nothing else to add as far as notes go, this time. (Expect long notes next time as recompense, probably.) Thanks as always to every comment and kudos!
> 
> xx


	12. Black Swan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Long notes at the end this time, though they're mostly about the Bolshoi and some things on Tatsuki Machida, and as always, just for more information. Please don't feel obligated to read them if you would rather not.)

There was no occasion outside of the Plisetsky gala for which the doors to the Nikiforov estate were open to friends and enemies alike.  Viktor Nikiforov, when creating this tradition, had been insistent upon the neutral nature of such a party. There were no grudges, no bloody recompense, to be had on Nevsky Prospekt on this night.

He was quite proud of himself for having facilitated this ceasefire year after year. It was no small feat to orchestrate peace among most of the world’s most powerful crime families, even for a single night.

“Gold,” Mila Babicheva remarked from her place beside him. She was already drinking steadily, a delicate wineglass stem between her freshly shortened and manicured nails.  She was under Giacometti’s orders to watch Viktor all night, to prevent him from doing anything which would be devastating to the family name. Viktor couldn’t see how she was going to do that flat on her ass from the full contents of a bottle of eiswein.  “That's brave of you.”

“Not my decision,” Viktor murmured. He leaned against the balcony railing, watching Katsuki Yuuri move smoothly through the growing audience.  The crowd parted to give him room to maneuver as he wished, schools of fish around an apex predator.

“Ah.” Mila sipped her wine.  “That makes more sense.”

Viktor closed his eyes.  They were not avoiding the excitement, per se.  Viktor simply needed time to get sufficiently buzzed before he thought he could handle the same asinine conversation with every single one of tonight’s guests.

Besides, he was not the center of attention tonight anyway.  All eyes were, had been all night, on the newly resurrected Katsuki Yuuri.

“Has your Italian made an appearance yet?” he asked casually, and Mila raised an eyebrow.

" _My_ Italian?” she repeated, and the flush to her cheeks was not a gift of the wine. She sounded pleased.  Also young and infatuated, but Viktor was trying his best to avoid admonishing her on such things tonight. “Yes. She's here.”

“Show me.”

Mila cut him a look, but gestured with her glass to a woman in the crowd.  As always, Sara Crispino was shadowed by her brother, and looking mildly murderous.

“Strikes me as your type,” Viktor agreed, and Mila tipped her head and smiled. It was half vicious, half dreamy.

“Oh, Viktor. You couldn't even _imagine.”_

“Hm.” Viktor set his empty champagne flute on the atop the banister and plucked Mila’s glass from her fingers.  He finished her wine for her, and she did not protest.

Instead she mirrored his lean against the railing, though Mila placed her elbows atop the lacquered wood and hung far over the empty air below. Viktor watched her carefully, in case this mild intoxication was enough to let gravity have its way with her. “I bet I could.”

Mila Babicheva looked at him sharply.  Her curls bounced jauntily against her face, but did nothing to make the rest of her appear nonthreatening. Even a tad incapacitated, Mila was no woman to cross.

“Don’t draw those comparisons, Viktor.  I’m not a fool.”

“I didn't imply anything.” Viktor blinked serenely. “I’ll just remind you what the Crispino family has been to us in years past, Babicheva.”

Enemies.  That's what they'd been.  Enemies, and competitors for an entire continent’s wealth. Really, it was not until Mila’s coming into adulthood that the two families had been even remotely civil. And whatever unsteady influence she believed she held over Sara Crispino now had done nothing to prevent the ransoming of Yuri Plisetsky three years ago, nor prompted any sort of apology for it.

“Things change,” Mila said irritably. “And I’m careful.”

“I believe you.” But three years was not a very long time, in the collective memories of crime families. Mild insults had caused more family drama, for a much longer stretch of time, than the kidnapping of the Plisetsky heir and collusion with European police had just recently. It was naive to assume that three years was significant time to smooth over such offenses.

But tonight was a special occasion. Tonight, there was no place for family bloodshed. Not in Viktor’s home.

“You could go speak to her,” he suggested drily. “I’m sure I can forfeit your scintillating conversation for a while.”

“Yeah?” Mila’s eyes were bright with excitement.  So pleased was she, she didn't even bother with a scathing reply. Her fingers drifted over the railing. “You'd let me--”

“Don't get lost. Don't do anything stupid.  No more wine.” Viktor nodded.  “Enjoy it.”

Mila grinned. Then her eyes narrowed.  “This isn't,” she said suspiciously, “this isn't some fucking test, is it?”

Viktor turned back to the railing and leaned into the empty air over a thirty meter drop. A well executed shove could kill him, in this position. Beside him, the empty champagne flute teetered over the banister and smashed itself on the floor at his feet.

He sighed. Closed his eyes. “No, Mila. Go.”

“Thank you.” Mila bobbed a bow, was halfway from the balcony when Viktor stopped her again.

“Wait. Mila.” She paused at the sound of her name but did not turn to look at him. “She’s very pretty, but don't mistake her for your friend.”

Mila Babicheva tipped her head back and laughed. Her tone was much too nonchalant when she replied, “Vitya, darling, I hardly want _friendship_ from her.”

Viktor worried the flesh inside his cheek. “Don't--” He couldn't think of an order that did not simply forbid her from emulating his own stupidity. Mila must have known it, because she smiled.

“Goodbye, Viktor,” she chirped, sounding only a fraction to the left of sober. “I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.” Near drunk and still giddy off ill-advised sex over one of his desks, probably. Viktor waved her off irritably, and leaned back over the balcony railing. Watched the gala unfold beneath him in disappointing sobriety.

Down on the floor, Katsuki Yuuri tipped his face upwards to the golden light and met Viktor Nikiforov’s eyes.

* * *

 

Phichit Chulanont was past being out of his depth. By now, he thought the appropriate term would simply be _drowning_.

“Hey.” Someone tapped his shoulder, and he tensed. Kept admirably to the instructions Katsuki Yuuri had given him, and turned quickly away. He did not speak. “Whoa, come on.  Hey.  What family are you?”

Phichit Chulanont did not speak Russian.  But this man was speaking English--very good English, too.  Phichit’s throat was dry, but he swallowed thickly and turned.

“Okukawa,” he said coolly, in his best imitation of Katsuki himself.  “Who are you to want to know?”

Rather than answer, his company surveyed him with interest. Phichit did his damnedest not to faint.  This was a _bad_ idea, possibly the worst he’d ever acted upon, and he was going to die for it. This was worse than the opera.

But the man across from him--not Russian, surely, not judging by his flawless English and his deep tan and the easy smile on his face--simply stuck his hand between them. Phichit took it hesitantly, shook hands silently. “Leo de la Iglesia. Plisetsky.”

“Ah.” The movement of his blood was audible, percussive, in his temples. _Plisetsky._  There was no way Phichit could forge a convincing Okukawa identity to a Plisetsky _._ There was no way he could lie like this. On his way to full panic, Phichit considered spilling his drink and making an inelegant escape. The wineglass in his hand trembled.

Leo de la Iglesia raised an eyebrow at the lack of a name admission.  Then he shrugged.  Turned halfway out to the crowd and sipped his own drink. “You're Katsuki’s then?”

_No._ “Yes.” He realized belatedly that the man was waiting for more and stammered, “Minako--Minako hasn't had students in years.”

De la Iglesia hummed into his drink. “I didn't know Yuuri had ever taken students.”

_Mistake._ Phichit backpedaled. “I’m not--”

“We met in the States.” Katsuki Yuuri’s fingers tightened briefly on Phichit’s shoulder, then freed him. Phichit hadn't realized he was visibly trembling until the release of this pressure left him reeling. “In Detroit. Though you weren’t very interested in the Okukawa brand then, were you?”

His eyes conveyed a very clear warning. _Don’t get us killed._ To Leo, Katsuki smirked.  “Phichit studied criminal justice.”

“Really?” The American man laughed.  “God, then was Detriot really that awful?”

“Much less exciting,” Phichit managed.  “But not awful.”

“Hm. I disagree.” Yuuri hummed, then appraised Phichit coolly. “Phichit, I’d like to speak with you.  And Leo, please find Guang Hong for me.  I need his advice.”

“Yessir.” Leo bowed jauntily at the waist, then left in search of Guang Hong’s expertise.  Yuuri’s gaze lingered on Phichit Chulanont in a way that inspired particular terror.

“You're lucky,” he said in Japanese, fingering one of his cuff links contemplatively, “that Leo is friendly. And a bit naive. Had he been Seung-gil, you'd have been shot back in the alley by now.”

Phichit couldn't recall who Seung-gil was, but he was grateful he hadn't yet encountered him. Nervously, he bobbed a nod. “Y-yes. I’m sorry.”

“Don't apologize.  Be better.” Katsuki Yuuri tipped his head back and surveyed the high gilded ceilings. The alabaster lines painted beneath his brows had the same characteristics as some avant-garde style of warpaint. “Five more hours.”

“I don't understand.”

“It’s not your job to understand,” Katsuki snapped, suddenly, unexpectedly incensed. Phichit flinched, and Yuuri closed his eyes. Composed himself.  “It is your job to follow orders.”

“Not _your_ orders,” Phichit reminded him bravely, and Yuuri raised a sharp eyebrow.

“And yet.  You are here.”

Heat filled his cheeks. Phichit looked to his shoes--Katsuki’s shoes, which were slightly ill-fitting.  Phichit Chulanont hadn't possess a single pair of Italian leather loafers in his life. “I’m here by Tokyo’s recommendation,” he mumbled, unconvincingly. Katsuki Yuuri made an unimpressed sound in the back of his throat.

“Oh.” His gaze drifted past Phichit now, settled on something more interesting. His expression had become coolly amused. “Tokyo’s recommendation is getting you into quite the trouble tonight, Mister Chulanont. No, no, don't turn around.”  And truthfully, instinctively, Phichit had been in the process of turning to see their new company. He stopped abruptly.

Immediately, Katsuki Yuuri was giving him fast-paced, quiet directions.  His eyes were still someplace beyond Phichit’s face. “Don’t speak English unless he asks you to. In fact, don’t speak at all unless you have my explicit encouragement to do so. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now turn around.” Mechanically, Phichit did so.  His hands trembled so finely that the glass in his fingers threatened to slip from between them. “Phichit Chulanont, meet Viktor Nikiforov.”

_Oh._

This was _exponentially_ above his pay grade.

“Red suits you more,” Nikiforov remarked, both in English and in lieu of a greeting. Katsuki dipped his head. His smile was dangerous.

“Interesting that you still believe I care what you think,” Yuuri replied in the same casual tone. “Though I was right about the gold.”

“Mm.” Nikiforov did not acknowledge Phichit’s existence. He watched Katsuki Yuuri with a vaguely pleased twist to his mouth, which he did not banish even when he lifted his flute of champagne to his lips. “I like to believe everything suits me, actually.”

“Vanity especially so,” Yuuri obliged, though his tone was insincere.  “Who knew it would present so many career opportunities?”

Viktor Nikiforov hummed.  He gestured vaguely at Katsuki’s person.  “Yours wasn't vanity,” he disagreed.  “That was something else.”

Something flashed in Katsuki Yuuri’s expression. Before he could retort, Nikiforov turned to Phichit.

“And who are you?”

“Chulanont,” Katsuki answered for him, waving a dismissive hand. Phichit hoped his complexion was normal and not the unsettling shade of green he imagined it was.  “He works for me out of Tokyo.”

Viktor Nikiforov appraised him. There was nothing particularly predatory in the action; rather, he looks more amused than dangerous. Phichit wondered if the secret to this easy calm was concealed in several glasses of champagne.  “Mm. Looks young.”

Katsuki Yuuri looked away from them both. He sighed in apparent boredom. “That's hardly a valid criticism coming from you, Viktor.”

“Perhaps.” Nikiforov smiled.  Phichit Chulanont’s fingers were cold.

“Chulanont,” Yuuri said, and he did not look at him. Something was tense in the set of his shoulders, the unnatural tilt to his head. His chest rose and fell to a visibly uncomfortable rhythm. “You may leave us.” It sounded like he wanted the opposite of such a thing to occur. He did not look like he wanted to be left alone with Viktor Nikiforov ever again in his life.

By now, after these few months, Phichit knew Katsuki Yuuri the criminal very well. But he thought this was perhaps a glimpse of Katsuki Yuuri the man, and he did not like it. It was much too vulnerable. Much too easy to forgive.

He dipped his head silently and stepped backwards. Viktor Nikiforov waved, and Phichit snatched another full wineglass off a passing tray and drained the contents. Perhaps the night would pass more quickly if he could not remember it.

“Toying with university kids again?” Even in jest, the phrase was barbed. The last time Yuuri has toyed with university kids, they had been the ones who held guns to the Plisetsky elites’ heads last month.

“That's none of your business,” Yuuri replied politely, and Viktor laughed.  The string quintet was playing an arrangement of Saint-Saens’ _Le cygne_ , and the sleepy melody set Yuuri’s teeth on edge. He was exhausted by this neverending poise, this need to be clever and coquettish when such things had never been among Yuuri’s true talents.

He wanted to hurt something, and not to preamble the action with clever banter.  Violence should speak for itself as often as it could, he had always believed. That was what Minako had taught him.

“He’s cute,” Viktor continued quietly. The words slithered along Yuuri’s shoulders, and he suppressed an involuntary shiver. “Though I confess I hadn’t thought adorably naive was your type.”

There was no use in taking the bait.  Yuuri’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.  Somewhere, from everywhere at once perhaps, the music swelled. Katsuki Yuuri had danced this piece once, under a private teacher in Nagoya. But he had never performed it for anyone sans Minako, and even then she had simply criticized his interpretation.  

_The swan is dying_ , _Yuuri. And it knows it. There is no fighting here. Stop fighting._

Yuuri had never been very good at that.  Things that were not fighting.

He wrapped his fingers around his own wrist and held them there. To test his own pulse, perhaps, and to keep from striking him. He so _wanted_ to.

Instead he drawled, “If you were not adorably naive, Viktor Nikiforov, then what were you?”

The earnestness in his expression was too much. Yuuri was no fool.  And yet.

Softly, Viktor Nikiforov said, “In love.”

Now Katsuki Yuuri stepped backwards. Hs jaw ached.  His teeth were going to splinter from the pressure.  “Do _not--”_ he began, and could not finish the statement. Every single cell within him was dying. And he _fought_ it.

“In all honesty, I’m not convinced you were capable of such a thing, Nikiforov.” The words cut the inside of his mouth. Blood dissolved on his tongue. Every part of him _hurt._

“No,” Viktor agreed.  “I don't think so.  But I believed I was, at the time.” 

“Wasn’t enough.” Speaking had taken second priority to Yuuri keeping himself from killing him. Each word he forced from between his teeth like a vile thing.

Viktor appraised him neutrally. Was it so obvious that Yuuri was grasping at the shreds of his self control? He hoped not.

“In retrospect,” Viktor said, “that’s very clear to me.”

_Three years. Three years._ He had spent as long as he had been in love with Viktor Nikiforov hating him, and he would be damned if that hate would not outlast the both of them. There was nothing left for Yuuri now but the pride that this hatred would preserve.

“But _you_ , Yuuri, were in love. Weren’t you?” His eyes would not leave Yuuri’s face. Surely, Yuuri must have been doing a phenomenal job at concealing his anger. Viktor was not stupid enough to provoke him this wholly. Not with all these witnesses to what would surely be an embarrassing defeat.  “Tell me you were.”

_“Why?”_ Yuuri spat.  “Haven’t you had _enough--”_

“Oh.” Viktor blinked.  “So the answer is yes.”

And of _course_ the answer was yes, it was painfully obvious that it was yes, Yuuri had spent almost half of his adult years in _love_ with this man.  But it meant nothing if he was not in love with him anymore. He promised himself so.

He was going to be sick.

“Excuse me.” Yuuri cleared his throat. “I--”

“By all means.”

“Sir? You wanted--” Guang Hong, behind him. Yuuri turned on his heel, crashed quite disastrously into his chest. Whatever had been in his hand--something sharp and clear, a glass perhaps--shattered against the floor. A crimson substance--wine, red wine, _surely_ \--seeped from between his fingers.

“ _Fuck’s_ sake, Ji,” Yuuri snapped, as if this mess was his fault. As if it was anyone's but Yuuri’s. “You’ve made a mess.”

“I’m sorry, sir--”

“You’re bleeding,” Viktor remarked neutrally. “Your hand.” Yuuri snarled, but said nothing. He was bleeding, but the fact didn’t necessitate commentary. He could feel the shredded first layer of skin on his palm well enough.

To Guang Hong, Yuuri snapped, “Get someone to clean this up.” To Viktor Nikiforov, he did not spare a second glance. He stalked from the ballroom, doing his best to keep his fist closed and the bloody mess in his palm from dotting the marble floor.

In a private bathroom on the second floor, Yuuri ran his palm under warm water, then emptied a bottle of peroxide over the lacerated skin. The cuts were not large, and the sting from the peroxide was stronger than the pain itself. The damage to his pride was greater.  

_Idiot._ His habit of letting Viktor Nikiforov get to him was going to ruin everything. Forget freedom, forget family honor, forget revenge, if he could not pull himself together nothing would change. Yuuri would be an international laughingstock, two times over. And--perhaps less importantly--he would be dead.

Yuuri placed both fists on the rim of the sink. Five more hours. Then he could sleep.  Then he could shed this consistent rage for a few more eternities, before Viktor Nikiforov reanimated it again.

His reflection in the mirror was foreign to him. The white ink over his eyelids, arching over the bridge of his nose and feathering to the opposite corners of his eyes, made him look young. Like the child version of himself, messing around in Katsuki Mari’s mock-kabuki makeup. Like a teenaged dancer learning the prima ballerina’s choreography to a piece he could never perform in the real world, pretending to pose for promotional photographs at the Tokyo Ballet. Like a crime lord barely in his twenties, being hopelessly seduced by the man that would attempt to kill him three years following.

The bleeding has nearly stopped. A thin line of red trickled down the sink’s basin from where Yuuri had rested his hands.  Dreamily, Minako’s criticism of his Odette solo revisited Katsuki Yuuri’s memory.

_Not everything requires anger, Katsuki Yuuri._ Firm hands guiding at the small of his back, correcting the angle of his chin to his throat, tracing the slope of his chest to his abdomen to the line of his hips. Somehow, he could not remember to whom such hands belonged. _Some things are just sad._

* * *

 

Mila had not returned. Chris had not called. Viktor Nikiforov was beginning to feel quite lonely at his own party.

He briefly considered seeking out the new little Okukawa protégée whose name he had not bothered to remember, simply for the company. Then he regained his senses and remembered talking to anyone that had a direct line of confidence to Katsuki Yuuri was something less than a bright idea.

Georgi Popovich was typically, characteristically miserable. It only seemed fair that he and Viktor keep each other company now.

“I gave her three etchings of _Los Caprichos_ , you know.” Georgi leaned against the wall, though he miscalculated the distance and stumbled on his way there. Something sloshed out of his glass. He was very drunk, already. It had hardly been an hour and a half.  “Not forgeries.  The real things.”

“You’ve told me.” Four times in the past thirty minutes.  Viktor did his best not to care. “It’s nearly been a year, Gosha. Don’t torment yourself with it.”

Georgi laughed. Evidently he was not drunk enough to miss the irony in the advice. “I went to New York for one of them,” he continued miserably. “Studied Goya for months and made my own goddamn forgery of the piece just to steal it. She left them all with the ring.”

All this discussion of Georgi’s engagement gone awry had ceased to be amusing within the first few months. Viktor was beginning to find the continuation of such discussion mildly depressing, given his own current situation.

“Take a break from the drinking perhaps, Popovich.” Sternly, Viktor pried the glass from his fingers.  This was not his job. In fact, this was Mila’s job. The well-being and discipline--and ruthless teasing--of Georgi Popovich had always been left to her, in better times.  

He and Viktor had grown up together under the Plisetsky house, but the two had never been as close as Viktor and Christophe had been. Perhaps it had to do with Georgi’s predilection for drama at levels even Viktor could not condone, which had preceded him since childhood, or perhaps it had to do with his consistent habit of falling in love with women entirely out of his league. Viktor, for the life of him, could not find either of these domineering aspects of Georgi’s personality anything but frankly unrelatable.

Georgi Popovich sniffed primly. His gaze followed the confiscation of his drink with sloppy displeasure. “As if you're any better.”

Viktor’s cheeks were warm.  His tone was icy.   

“I am not currently drinking myself into requiring medical attention,” he said bitingly. “I would argue that that is infinitely better than your situation, Gosha.”

Popovich's grand sweeping hand gesture proved less impressive under the influence of copious amounts of gin.  “Just sleep with him,” he announced, as if the very sight of Viktor like this exhausted him.  “That usually fixes these sorts of things, doesn't it?”

“No.” Viktor narrowed his eyes. “Either way, I can't recall requesting your advice on the matter.”

“You should.” Georgi made a face which looked like he was narrowly avoiding being sick.  “I’m an expert.”

“Shut up, Popovich.” And Georgi shut up. For a moment.

“He’s back,” he murmured, leaning back against the wall and gently closing his eyes. “Right entrance, talking to the Koreans now.”

Viktor looked. Katsuki Yuuri was indeed back, looking composed and deadly as ever. He smiled at one of the younger geondal women, and when she offered him her hand he kissed it. Viktor wasn't sure if such a thing made him envious or not.  “Thank you, Gosha,” he murmured.

“Mhmm.” Georgi turned his head to the side and opened his eyes. “Viktor? Do you think I can...” Vague hand gesture communicated something unclear.  Viktor nodded.

“There's plenty of empty rooms on the third floor,” he replied, though the subject matter didn't interest him in the slightest.  He kept his eyes on Katsuki Yuuri. “Go sleep it off.”

“Thank you.” Georgi pushed himself away from the wall and left him. Viktor continued to observe Katsuki Yuuri from afar.

Really, he had not changed so much. Viktor had spent the past few months convincing himself that this was not Katsuki Yuuri, could not possibly be Katsuki Yuuri. Yuuri was not this cold. Yuuri was not this cruel.

But, in retrospect, Viktor knew that Yuuri had always had the ability to be this way. It didn't matter now that he hadn't been cold and cruel then, because these traits remained what he had been taught, and he had chosen both them and Okukawa Minako over the Plisetsky house.

Though perhaps that wasn't fair. To accuse Yuuri of choosing his teacher over Viktor, one had to acknowledge that Viktor too had chosen his teacher over Yuuri. And much earlier too. Perhaps.

In any case, he had promised Chris that he would fix this. At the moment, Viktor could think of no way to fix this disaster but to live with it. To stop fighting so fiercely, and pray that Yuuri was not so intent on vengeance that he would ruin them both.

And so he went to ask him to dance.

The geondal woman whose fingers Yuuri had kissed blinked at him appreciatively when he joined them. She was pretty, though she looked much too young to be sporting the types of scarring that she did on her face. Viktor remembered Yuuri telling him how he had dabbled in Chil-Sung-Pa, though Viktor still could not envision how one _dabbled_ in such things. His general understanding of the fighting business did not denote a casual participation.

“I don't mean to interrupt,” he preceded himself, and the Korean delegation nodded respectfully. For the life of him, Viktor could not remember their family name. “I was hoping to encourage some activity that was not social drinking,” he said, in jest.

The woman laughed. “What's wrong with social drinking?” Viktor smiled indulgently, but did not respond. He was not looking at her. 

“Activity such as?” Katsuki Yuuri blinked at him boredly.  His gaze was heavy-lidded. There was a cruel twist to his mouth that lacked the conviction to reach his eyes. He looked thoroughly exhausted, and as if he was only wasting further energy to hide the fact.

Viktor offered him his hand. Yuuri did not take it. “A dance, Katsuki Yuuri.  Just one.”

Heavy silence. The woman looked between the two of them hungrily. Yuuri’s expression was damn near marble.

“Oh, darling.” Viktor smiled.  He did not withdraw his hand. “Don't make me beg.”

Yuuri's fingers were cool. His palms were calloused much deeper than Viktor had remembered. The toughened pads of his palms were not consistent with his slim white fingers and the delicate pressure he applied to the center of Viktor’s hand.

“Please don't beg,” Yuuri drawled, calculatedly indifferent. His fingers twitched barely against Viktor’s own.  “You always end up embarrassing yourself.”

And it was not much. But it was a start.

The geondal woman laughed and turned to a companion. “A dance?” she invited, and by the time the vision of Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov with hands clasped had reached the center of the floor, Viktor had inspired quite the trend in his patrons.

“I missed dancing with you,” Viktor confided, the tilt to his voice light.  Katsuki was so close. The merest distance between them had inspired a heady kind of fear in Viktor Nikiforov. “We should have done it more often.”

“Everything we did was a performance, Viktor,” Katsuki Yuuri murmured, and he did not look at him. “There was no need for anything more.”

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Not always.” Yuuri tipped his chin upward to look into his face, and the barest hint of a smile played on his lips.

“Forgive me. But I doubt you could tell the difference between your own truth and lies at this point, Nikiforov. Let alone mine.”

_I always knew when you were lying._ That had been the whole issue. Viktor had always known when Yuuri was leading him astray, while Yuuri had never been able to separate Viktor’s words from his intentions.

A pas de deux had sprung up from the string quintet, and without conscious acknowledgement of the fact, Viktor Nikiforov was leading.  And Katsuki Yuuri was letting him. 

“Interesting.” Yuuri hummed something discordant with the strings as they moved to a somehow-predisposed choreography which was not quite ballroom or ballet, but rather a bastardization of the both. Somewhere in the audience, Lilia Baranovskaya was surely cursing Nikiforov’s name. “Even on my payroll, this damned cult of yours is always so eager to paint me as the villain.”

“I don't--” _Understand_. But he did.  What they were dancing now, what they had fallen so effortlessly into even after three years separate, was Tchaikovsky’s _Swan Lake_ duet.  Katsuki Yuuri was dancing the role, quite effortlessly, of the black swan.   

“Perhaps it is because you insist on the part so often,” Viktor suggested. Three steps left, a turn. Had they been on a more forgiving stage, in more accommodating footwear, there might have been a lift.

Instead, Yuuri spun flush against him, for one agonizing moment, then back to face him.  His cheeks were slightly pink.  “I do not.”

“Of course you don't.” There were others around them, spectators and dancers alike, but there was no mistaking the attention of the crowd. Viktor had missed this unfailing respect. He had only ever seemed to earn it with Yuuri beside him. “You're entirely innocent.”

“Mm,” Yuuri agreed neutrally. “And you're a butcher playing at a prince.”

“I am a prince.” Affronted, Viktor nearly misstepped. Yuuri caught him by the hips, corrected his foot placement quietly, and looked upward.  The white ink around his eyes was deceptive. Katsuki Yuuri was no white swan, nor he had ever been.

“The prince dies at the end, Vitya.”

A turn. A spin. Viktor Nikiforov placed his hands too firmly against Katsuki Yuuri’s waist and Yuuri hissed, even as he dipped mere centimeters from the floor.  

“Your technique is still lacking,” he remarked scathingly when Viktor had lifted him back upwards, though his eyes were elsewhere.  Suddenly, Viktor couldn't bear the combined insult of Katsuki Yuuri correcting _him_ on his technique while not even deigning to look at him.  He scowled.

“And yet,” he reproached, turning Yuuri into a few smart, dizzying circles against which the other man closed his eyes, “Your expertise never won you a principal role in Tokyo, did it?”

Yuuri’s eyes narrowed. How typical, that he would still find this barb fruitful. Viktor knew him too well.

“Don’t pretend like you would have preferred I danced, Viktor.” The slant to his mouth was coy now. Viktor blinked pointedly. “You’ve always enjoyed my other talents too much for that.”

 Still, Viktor pushed forward. Neither Katsuki Yuuri, nor the black swan, would get to him tonight. “Yuuri.” Viktor’s own voice was sweetly indulgent. “What use does a company have for a man who can only seduce? Wouldn't you agree that presents a very narrow skill set?”

“There’s no white swan without the black,” Yuuri said, tightly bemused. Viktor laughed.  The violinist climbed octaves fiercely, and the pace of their steps quickened.

Here, had they been at the Bolshoi, an arabesque. In Tokyo, a leap. In Viktor’s home, lacking true choreography, the two settled for a gentle spin.

Viktor said, “The black swan was never your problem, darling.”

_The prince dies at the end, Vitya._

Not in Russia, anymore. The Bolshoi hadn’t run a _Swan Lake_ performance which killed Siegfried in years. But Viktor had always thought the new Russian ending more tragic anyway. The concept of living with one’s regrets had always terrified him more than the immediate alternative. 

“Viktor.” The name, terribly, softened something within him.  Perhaps it was merely the way Yuuri spoke it.  His hand was very still at Viktor’s shoulder. Viktor led him into a sweeping turn, a shallow dip, and Katsuki Yuuri closed his eyes. “Please, if you have any say in the matter at all anymore. Don't make me your villain.”

Viktor Nikiforov laughed.  He said, “What else could you be?”

They were moving too fast now. The pas de deux had slowed--had intended to, at the very least--but the two of them had continued forward with the _entré_ tempo like a pair of novices. The strings picked up their own pace to follow--a sign of a good orchestra, always, was its ability to bow to its dancers--but the integrity of the piece had been ruined. Yuuri was pushing too hard, doing his damnedest to lead, and Viktor was refusing him the pleasure.  

At one point, Yuuri spun into him, matching him limb for limb, and tipped his head back into the space beside Viktor’s own face. A Bolshoi imitation, though the pathos behind it was distinctly wrong.  Viktor could not find much within him that would _love_ this creature beside him, even if he had deigned to let himself be swept along by the energy of the duet.  Katsuki Yuuri was out of practice. His black swan had suffered for it.

“You’re rushing,” Viktor reproached quietly, and Yuuri’s eyes flashed.

“I am not.” Ferociously. But Viktor knew, from the lowering of his eyes, that Yuuri knew he was right. He also knew by the way he slowed, imperceptibly, by the way his grip on his arm loosened slightly.

“Thank you.” He was not smug. Yuuri ignored him regardless. Viktor wondered what he had thought he stood to gain from telling Viktor not to make him his villain.  As if Katsuki Yuuri could _not_ be a villain, in this house or any of the next. As if he had it within him to be something which was not terrible and disastrous and wholly apocalyptic.

Nowadays, it was simply implausible. Three years ago, it could have been a convincing lie.

“Sometimes, I do think I miss this.” The admission was so quiet, briefly Viktor thought he had imagined it. Katsuki Yuuri was not looking at him.  He still danced in time to the pas de deux but the anger appeared to have dissipated in one fell swoop. For a moment, there was something innocent in his face.

And Viktor Nikiforov fell for it.

He prompted softly, “What--what about it do you miss?”

A penché here, at the Bolshoi. At the Nikiforov estate, the slightest twitch of Katsuki Yuuri’s fingers against his shoulder.

Quietly, Katsuki Yuuri said, “I don't know.”

“I’m sorry.” He couldn't help himself. The words were out of his mouth before Viktor could salvage any remaining shred of his pride. “I’ve wanted to say it for--for a long time. I am.”

Yuuri’s eyes narrowed. Viktor steeled himself for the bright burst of pain Yuuri breaking his fingers would surely entail. But no such thing occurred.

“Yes,” Katsuki Yuuri murmured. The quietness to his voice was more dreamy than enraged. Viktor wondered again, as he did incessantly, what Yuuri hoped to gain here from keeping Viktor alive. “Well.  I’ve allowed you quite enough time to think up an apology better than that, Viktor Nikiforov.”

“Yes,” Viktor agreed, just as softly.

“In fact, I expect you to grovel.” Contemplative. There was something hypnotic about this exchange. Katsuki Yuuri still would not look at him, and Viktor Nikiforov couldn't tear his gaze away. “Beg for forgiveness on your knees, and then we’ll see.”

Viktor said, “Yes.”

It was what he deserved, what he owed. Undoubtedly, it was the bare minimum Yuuri could have asked of him.  Viktor didn't know why it was so difficult to implicate. Possibly because he knew it was not all he expected. There was more, infinitely more, which Yuuri had not told him.

The music swelled. Viktor Nikiforov could not remember the events leading up to this moment, nor if they held any sort of importance at all.  There was only this, and this and this and _this_ , Katsuki Yuuri in an arabesque, then a passé, dancing perfect circles around Viktor Nikiforov and he did not care.  He could not care. Viktor himself moved not of his own volition but by someone else’s bidding, and time and sense and the thought of Lilia Baranovskaya damning him in the audience because he was a fool and a whore and all manner of things she had taught him not to be--these things held no concern for him. They had ceased to matter altogether.

Viktor had been mistaken.  Yuuri's technique had not suffered any toll during his three years rotting in Fuchū. He was still stunning, flawless, even more mesmerizing than he had ever been. A perfect black swan.

The adagio ended too suddenly, Yuuri arching into a backbend as if the taxing movement cost him nothing, Viktor’s hands pressed too urgently beneath the muscles of his shoulders, and he was panting and miserable and twenty-six again.  Inexorably, he felt like sobbing.

Katsuki Yuuri was panting too, as he righted himself from the bend and lifted his hand to fix Viktor’s bangs, which had fallen unbidden into his eyes.  The barest smile hovered on his lips. Viktor realized suddenly that he and Yuuri had not only become the center of attention of every one of his guests, but also the only pair to have finished the dance.  They were alone on the floor, had been for god knows how long.

“Perhaps we were a bit carried away,” Yuuri murmured, and Viktor was horribly, damningly taken with him. He felt as if he was going to pieces right here, with the entirety of the crime underground to witness it.

“Excuse--excuse me.” Viktor whispered, only because he could muster nothing greater.  “I’ve got to--” _Escape._  But he couldn't. Not with Katsuki Yuuri’s hand on his face, his fingertips cradling his temple like they always had when Viktor had complained of the onset of his worst headaches. Even with the distance to Yuuri’s expression, the barest touch that suggested his prolonged contact with Viktor’s face was more an afterthought than conscious intimacy--Viktor could not pull away.

Until Yuuri’s gaze latched to something beyond him, and his face became suddenly bright. In an excitatory way, but also in a way that suggested vague panic on his behalf. He said, removing his hand very coolly from Viktor’s face, “Minako. You've made it.”

And every part of Viktor Nikiforov felt as if he had been plunged into an ice bath. Suppressing the instinct to flee, he did not turn.

Okukawa Minako, her English soft and clipped in the style Yuuri’s had always been, said, “And not late enough to miss the performance, I’m pleased to see.”

“This?” Yuuri laughed. He stepped to the side, likely to better see her around Viktor’s height. “This was just a little fun. Not for your benefit, really.”

“Oh?” Minako’s tone conveyed her explicit doubt in the claim. Viktor, for his part, thought her correct.  Minako was Yuuri’s teacher in every sense of the word, and this show had been for her exponentially more than it had been for Viktor. This was Yuuri proving himself not to Viktor, but to Okukawa Minako, once again.

“You will not greet me, Viktor Nikiforov?” She sounded endlessly amused, and timeless too.  Fitting for the sorcerer's role in which she had so obviously cast herself.  “What a shame. After all I have done for you.”

“And what exactly have you done for me, Okukawa Minako?” He couldn't help himself. Viktor turned to look her in the face.  

Ingratiatingly, Minako smiled.  “I made you, didn't I? In a way.”

Beside Viktor, Katsuki Yuuri laughed. Viktor understood now his calm self-possession during the pas de deux, even after the mess he had been half an hour earlier. He had known Minako had arrived, had evidently found courage in her presence. Sought solace in knowing exactly how Viktor feared her, most likely. 

“No,” Viktor Nikiforov said calmly. “I believe I made you both, actually.”

“Mm.” Minako tipped her face upward. She was not incredibly short. Long dark hair bound at the nape of her neck, posture achingly perfect, eyes narrowed and a disdainful set to her mouth, she was terrifyingly ageless. There was not a part of her which Viktor did not see in Katsuki Yuuri beside him, could not have seen four years ago, had he ever bothered to look.

“Excuse us, Yuuri.” She did not look at him when she spoke to him. It was such a strange thing, to see Yuuri servile again. Minako’s presence had flicked some deep ingrained switch within him, and he bowed respectfully at her casual acknowledgement. “I hate to steal your dance partner from you. But I did not travel fourteen hours to not have a few words with the Devil of Saint Petersburg in his home.”

Still, Yuuri didn't speak. Instead, he nodded. Viktor watched the movement of his eyes, the careful way Katsuki Yuuri avoided looking at either him or Minako too directly. To witness Yuuri heeled like this was less satisfying than he had imagined. Viktor thought it might make him sick.

Okukawa Minako extended her hand to Viktor delicately. The velvet sleeves of her dress concealed everything to her wrists; when she turned, decades-old but still-bright ink was visible down the length of her spine. She was Yuuri’s teacher, undoubtedly.

Her fingers were cool against his palm. Having drawn Viktor to her, leaving Katsuki Yuuri alone in the center of the floor, Minako removed her fingers from his sharply. Viktor dropped his hand to his side.  Everything about this was wrong wrong _wrong_ , and yet he couldn't stop it. Couldn't avoid his own participation in Minako’s machinations--had never been able to, if he was honest.

The Okukawa family had always designed to ruin him. It was simply Viktor Nikiforov’s fault that he made it so easy.

* * *

 

Somehow, Katsuki Yuuri found himself leaning over an outside balcony, staring dizzily into the darkness below him.  He had no recollection how he had come to be there. He was soaked to the bone with icy rain. 

_No_. He wasn't. On second observation, Yuuri discovered he was completely dry. He was not on the balcony at all, but on the threshold of the closed double doors. Rain hailed ferociously on the marble.

He was losing his mind.  He was far from sober. He thought perhaps he could drown himself in that rain. 

“Katsuki.” Phichit Chulanont had ceased to use any sort of polite honorifics when addressing him. More often than Yuuri cared for, he had begun to use his given name.  “Yuuri.  Are you alright?”

“Absolutely.” The words were hardly a murmur. “Yes.”

“You don't sound--” How foolhardy he had grown. Yuuri snatched his wrist out of reach before Phichit could touch him. The younger man made a sound like a breath caught in his throat.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to.”

“You forget yourself much too often for my liking, Chulanont.” As cold as he could manage.  In his current state, it was less of a threat and more of a whisper.

“I’m--my apologies.”

“Yes.” He pressed his cheek to the glass. It was still summertime, and thus the rain-splattered pane was not as cool as he had hoped. Katsuki Yuuri closed his eyes. “This is going to kill me.”

Phichit Chulanont asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?” and Yuuri nearly laughed.

“No,” he said, too sharply. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh.” Phichit squared his shoulders against the wall beside the double doors. Yuuri watched him from the edge of his vision.

“You’re drunk,” Phichit observed quietly, and Yuuri shrugged. He didn't feel drunk. He felt hollow.

“I’m certainly something,” he agreed. He realized belatedly that he was digging his fingernails into the heel of his palm quite painfully, and forced his fingers to splay outward. Absent the pain, the feeling of total numbness returned.  “Terrified, maybe.”

“That's not something to be ashamed of,” Phichit murmured.  “I’m terrified too.” 

Katsuki Yuuri laughed.  “There is a very large difference,” he drawled, “between you and me, Phichit Chulanont.”

“Not really.” Evidently, Phichit had been indulging as well. Nothing made one as bold as drinks served at a Plisetsky gala.  “You just like to pretend so.”

A flash of anger.  Yuuri recognized that the majority of it was misdirected, though he could not help himself when he snapped, “That is _none_ of your concern--”

His head hurt. He wanted to sleep.  Somewhere below them, Okukawa Minako was saving his ass.  Yuuri didn't know why he was so resentful of her for it.

“It is my concern if I'm going to continue to work with you, Yuuri,” Phichit said archly. “You expect me to jump through all these hoops, then the least you can do is treat me like a human being when I ask.”

Yuuri observed him curiously.  Phichit looked suddenly embarrassed, but still not afraid. Yuuri laid a hand against the windowpane.

“They’re going to kill you,” he said quietly, and he was not sure if he was speaking to himself or Chulanont.  “Either way, whether we win or not, they're going to kill you.”

“I’ll handle that when I come to it,” Phichit replied sharply. He did not bear any resemblance to Yuuri but here, dressed in his clothes, hair combed back, with the setting of the Nikiforov estate surrounding him--Yuuri saw a bit of the Okukawa in him.

“We can make a deal,” he whispered.  “I can offer you protection--”

“I could report you to Fuchū for that,” Phichit snapped, and Yuuri almost flinched. “Don’t try it again.”

Yuuri closed his eyes. He wasn't quite sure what he had done. He remembered vaguely himself slipping from the ballroom, a packet of something on a porcelain sink. Whatever it had been, it had certainly done its job.

“You should sit down.” A hand at his elbow, gently guiding him somewhere softer, where he did not feel so much as if the world was going to devour him. Yuuri thought it a testament to his insobriety that he was letting Phichit touch him. He did not protest once.

“M’fine,” he mumbled. Phichit Chulanont snorted.

“Sure. Sit.”

Yuuri pressed his index fingers to the space between his eyes. He was a self-immolating mess. Quietly, he confessed, “I don't think I can do this anymore.”

“Okay. Drink.” Phichit pressed something cold into his hand. Katsuki Yuuri drank obediently and found it was only water. Not that it would help with immediate sobriety, but perhaps it would keep his liver from complete system failure come the morning.

Phichit Chulanont said, “If it's any consolation, he is just as terrified of you as you are of him. That’s obvious.”

“Is it--” Yuuri paused, focused solely on the filling of his lungs for the briefest moment. “Is it obvious that I’m afraid?”

“Sometimes,” Phichit admitted.  “If you're looking for it.”

“Oh.” Something like grief filled him. Katsuki Yuuri, the one that was Saint Petersburg's Shining Prince, did not feel things like terror. He was pathetic, and if he was not more careful, the world was going to know it.  “It’s not--not enough.”

“Mm.” Above him, Phichit Chulanont hummed absently. Yuuri tipped his face upward and witnessed him peering over the railing at the gala below. “What isn't?”

“Viktor being afraid of me.” It wasn’t, because Viktor’s fear of Yuuri did not give him an advantage. It only leveled the playing field.  “It's not enough.”

“Well.” Phichit sounded almost amused.  He had grown much too comfortable in Yuuri’s presence. Yuuri had grown so accustomed to it that sometimes he forgot to mind. “If it’s more helpful, he’s also very much infatuated with you, Katsuki Yuuri.”

“Don’t.” Yuuri shook his head. It took some mild effort to stand, but his head was not quite as foggy anymore. Perhaps the water had helped. “Please don’t.”

Chulanont looked him in the face, studied with particular interest something in his eyes.  Then Phichit looked down.  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to offend.”

“You did.” Beside him, Yuuri swayed. “You did.”

“I only meant--” He broke off, then corrected himself softly. “That’s what you want anyway, isn't it? Doesn't it make things easier?”

_Yes_. It did. _No_. It didn't.  Katsuki Yuuri said, “I don't know.” 

“I understand,” Phichit murmured. “A little.” Then he said, “Hold on. Who is that?”

Yuuri followed the subtle inclination of his head dizzily downward, and his eyes settled on a man in the crowd. A newly arrived guest.  Horrifically, a familiar one.

Yuuri experienced the sensation of sudden chilling sobriety, as the sleepy warmth left him and tired hopelessness bowed to cold panic. He was damned. Phichit Chulanont was an equally dead man.

Fuchū was not going to be very happy with either of them.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Phichit hissed, and only then Yuuri realized that he was halfway to the staircase already.  He scowled.

“I’m taking care of this,” he snapped, chillingly concise. “Stay here.” 

“Yuuri--”

“Call me by that name again and I will cut out your tongue, Phichit Chulanont.” And he was down the stairway, and he was on his way to making a catastrophic mistake.

“Mister Katsuki,” the man bowed ingratiatingly. Yuuri was trembling with finely concealed rage.  “You look well.”

Yuuri spat something rather offensive in his own tongue, to which the man smiled. Innocuous rain splattered his suit, evidence he had just come inside from the elements. “I’m sorry. I don't understand Japanese.”

_“Fuck_ you.” Yuuri wondered if they were drawing attention. He couldn't tell for himself; terrified rage had kept him upright and coherent, but whatever he had done between the pas de deux and finding himself on the balcony was making any observation or tact damn near impossible.  “Get out of this house.”

“But I’m an invited guest,” the man protested mildly. “I’m on the list and everything.  You can check for yourself, sir--look for a G. Beskudnikov on the roster.”

_Beskudnikov._ The name was familiar. Yuuri searched his limited memory for a match and found nothing. Across the room, Minako Okukawa and Viktor Nikiforov raised their eyes to watch him.

_Beskudnikov.  Oh._

And Yuuri remembered.

He restrained himself enough to refrain from drag Grigori Beskudnikov, Viktor Nikiforov’s Kremlin man, off the floor; his mind was clouded but he knew enough not to start this fight publically. 

Privately, it was a different matter.

Privately, he threw the man who had orchestrated this entire plot in Fuchū over the sink, and when he gasped a laugh Yuuri grabbed him by the throat and pinned him unkindly to the bathroom wall. 

“What are you doing?” Yuuri snarled. “Why are you here?”

Grigori Beskudnikov’s hands flew to his throat, attempted to pry Yuuri’s fingers from his windpipe, and Yuuri remembered that he could not speak in the throes of asphyxiation. He loosened his grip marginally, and the man gasped.

“It's my job,” he said, and to Yuuri this was the wrong answer. He grabbed the man by his hair and yanked his head back roughly.

“Give me a real reason,” Yuuri said calmly, “or I will break your fucking neck.”

“You won't.” His lips had gone bluish. But he was still breathing, albeit raggedly. “You won’t, because we’ve got your family.”

Another wrong answer. Somehow, it hardly gave Yuuri pause.  “Fine. Your legs then. Which one would you prefer first?”

Beskudnikov laughed in his face.  Yuuri backhanded him, hard.

“I’m here,” Beskudnikov said laboriously, for Yuuri’s hand was still against his throat, “to make sure you do _your_ job, Katsuki Yuuri.”

“You work for Nikiforov.”

“I work for the Kremlin,” Beskudnikov corrected. “Viktor Nikiforov simply pays my off-record bonuses. It's none of his business how I conduct my official work.”

Yuuri didn't understand. He was too tired for this, and also too high. He had not anticipated negotiations with one of Viktor’s own agents in the first floor master bathroom.

“The Kremlin sends people to negotiate with Japanese prisoners now?”

Beskudnikov smiled. “It appears so, doesn't it?”

Yuuri applied more pressure to his windpipe. “I don't appreciate being surveilled in my own home.”

A choked laugh. His accent was distinctly Russian now. Yuuri didn't know how he had never managed to place it, when they had first met in Fuchū. He was so, so foolish. _“Your_ home, Katsuki Yuuri?” He smiled again.  “This isn't yours.”

“Haven't you heard?” Briefly Yuuri contemplated snapping his fingers. Katsuki Mari’s face bloomed in his memory, her dyed hair falling into her face and a cigarette--how Yuuri had hated that habit, back when she had began it at fifteen--between her lips. Yuuri did not snap Grigori Beskudnikov’s fingers. “I own everything now.”

His gaze had become unfocused. Still, the man looked at him smugly. “Not quite, Mister Katsuki.” A ragged breath. Eyes slid to Yuuri’s throat, then back up again. “Tokyo still owns the rights to your person. And I get a cut, too.”

Not gently, Yuuri elbowed him in the face. Grigori Beskudnikov gasped, eyes wide and white with shock, and he slid to the side gracelessly.  Yuuri wrenched his torso so when he fell over the sink, the faucet jammed mercilessly between his shoulder blades.

He would gladly have killed him here, now.  When the idea of doing so revisited him, Katsuki Yuuri thought of his mother.

“What do you want with Viktor Nikiforov?” he snarled instead. Beskudnikov blinked against white, bright pain.

“I want--” Panting. Yuuri did not hit softly. “I want his money. That’s all.”

“There are easier ways to make fortunes,” Yuuri spat.  He couldn't place this anger. Nor could he be bothered to check its bounds. This high had taken on an entirely new form with the first spot of blood at Grigori Beskudnikov’s mouth.  “Whose side are you on? Don’t lie to me.”

“Who--” Every movement was damningly laborious. Yuuri loosened his hold, so as not to kill him too quickly. “Whose are _you_ on, Katsuki Yuuri?”

And Yuuri blinked. Something like a sigh unfurled within him, and he was exhausted again. This was no longer fun, and he lacked the energy for making another man bleed.  Still, he scowled. The inside of his mouth was bitter. “My own,” he said purposefully, and Grigori Beskudnikov laughed. Used his failing strength to lift himself over the basin of the sink and stand.  At his full height, Beskudnikov was taller.

Yuuri took no steps back, though he wanted to.

“He mourned you, in those three years.” Yuuri didn't care. He didn't care. He didn't.  “It was usually pathetic. But sometimes it was sweet.”

“Can a man still conduct Kremlin business without a tongue?” Yuuri wondered aloud.  The words were quiet, almost lacking the necessary conviction to make them dangerous.

Beskudnikov smoothed his suit. He turned his back on Yuuri boldly and dabbed at the blood on his lips in the mirror. “Think for a very long time before you touch me again, Katsuki Yuuri.  Your father has gotten frail in his age. 

Yuuri drove his switchblade cleanly through the center of Beskudnikov’s palm.  But then, really, he didn't.

He only thought about it.

And thinking didn't do him very much good at all.

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov kissed Okukawa Minako’s hand, and she reciprocated the gesture by kissing his cheek. Her lips were cold, and the custom left him shivering.

“How is business?” Viktor asked politely. Minako looked him in the face and laughed.

“Business is awful, Nikiforov.  You know that.”

“Yes.” He had been the reason for it, after all. Yuuri’s arrest had destroyed the Okukawa enterprise, and even if Katsuki himself was now hesitant to admit it, Okukawa Minako had no such delusions.  “My apologies.”

Minako scoffed.  These stilted pleasantries were obviously boring her. Viktor ground his teeth in anticipation.

“My dear,” Minako drawled, looking upon him with a small, satisfied smile. “You look afraid of me.”

“I am.” The predisposition to be honest with those who outranked him was a habit ingrained from his childhood under Nikolai Plisetsky. Viktor resented it now.

Minako closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the warm light. Yuuri moved like her. Yuuri spoke like her. Viktor had forgotten exactly how chilling it was to be in Okukawa Minako’s company when one knew Katsuki Yuuri as well as he did.  As well as he had.

“Good,” Minako said.  “That's wise of you.” And then she said, “I want to talk about Yuuri.”

Viktor did too, if he was being sincere. But not now. Not with Minako. Still. Quietly, he nodded.

Minako said, “You know that, would it not start a war I cannot fight, I would kill you right now, Viktor Nikiforov. For what you've done to him.”

Viktor nodded.

“And you would deserve it.” There was a terrible fire to her dark eyes. “I would make it last three years, if I could. Certainly a few days.”

Viktor nodded. He thought about the many ways Okukawa Minako might kill him, and found the thought distant enough to be not unpleasant. He did deserve such things. That was mere fact.

“He would have done anything for you,” Minako remarked, as if the statement was only a bit of commentary on distant current events and not a confession which would decimate Katsuki Yuuri, were he here to witness it. “Did you think about that when you shot him?”

Slowly, Viktor nodded. Softly, he said, “I knew it.” Unbidden, as though he could not help himself, more words came.  “That's what made it easy.”

Minako’s gaze was hypnotic. Viktor reassessed his evaluation of her. Yuuri was Minako’s, yes, but Minako was more--much more.  Yuuri was the swan, but Minako was the sorceror. Viktor couldn't have bested either of them tonight, even in his own home. 

Okukawa Minako asked, “Was it? Was it easy?”

Logistically, yes.  Yuuri had been so eager to please him then, so desperate for Viktor to know he would gladly die for him, to prove he served the Plisetsky house above his own.  It had been easy to lead Yuuri astray, because he had wanted to be led. He always had.

“No,” Viktor confessed softly. “No, it wasn't.”

“Hmm.” Minako turned from him dismissively. “Did you love him?”

“Yes." 

And that was it. Viktor Nikiforov’s heart bared before a woman he had always resented and so long feared, and there was nothing left for him to say. No words in his throat, no air in his lungs. The blood gathering beneath his skin was hot.

Minako clucked her tongue, unimpressed. Viktor imagined her doing so to Yuuri when he was young, after a dissatisfying performance in ballet or language or fighting. She said, “Evidently not as much as you thought.”

“There was nothing else for me to do,” Viktor Nikiforov protested wildly.  “The Italians had our heir, the papers wouldn't stop running stories about how I was losing my grip, letting the bratva become a Japanese deal--”

“Would that really have been so terrible?” Minako drawled. “Yuuri certainly has a knack for running empires.”

“There was nothing else for me to do,” Viktor whispered. Okukawa Minako looked at him dubiously.   _Oh, Viktor. You can do better than that._

“So you let the fucking Crispino duo steal your thirteen-year-old heir from his bed and struck a deal to sell your second in command back to Japan. And you thought that would make you stronger.”

“I couldn't afford…” He faltered. No, he had known that betraying Yuuri would not make him stronger. That had been the basis for the Crispino deal in the first place. The Plisetsky family had grown too powerful under Katsuki-Nikiforov rule, had begun to creep too willfully into western Europe, and the Italians had sought to wound them irreparably. Ransoming their prince and beheading their commanding snake had been the plot, and it had worked. Viktor Nikiforov had agreed to it, and he had grovelled too.  “It’s very expensive to lose an heir, Okukawa.”

She smiled. “Oh, I am aware, Nikolaevich.”

Ice in his veins. Nobody called him by his patronymic anymore; nobody _dared._ Not even Yakov had used his adoptive father’s brand on Viktor since he was a child. It was simply not done. Viktor did not permit it.

“I will not allow you to speak to me like this in my own home,” he snapped.  “Do not forget that coming here under tonight’s neutrality is my gift to guests, and I can revoke it if I desire, Minako.”

The older woman inclined her head. Her eyes said _I dare you._  Her lips carved from the air: “Yuuri should have killed you when I gave him the order to do so." 

Viktor blinked. _When--_

Knowing was white hot, searing pain in his chest. Yakov had been right. Mila had been right. Viktor had always, always been wrong.

“Unfortunately,” Minako was saying, watching Viktor’s conception of reality spiral out of grasp coolly, “Yuuri is a bit softer than us both, Nikolaevich.  He told me no, several times. Some in very creative verbiage.”

“He said no.” Viktor couldn't fathom couldn't envision couldn't think. “He said no.”

“Mm.” Minako stepped sideways gracefully to allow Viktor to look before him, when she had previously been standing.  On the same balcony Viktor had stood hours before, Katsuki Yuuri and his unnamed Okukawa lackey leaned over the railing. “Three times. One each year he slept in your bed, actually. How does that feel?”

“I--” He didn't know. Not good. Eloquence and an astute grasp on his emotions had fled him.

But he had _known_ this. At least, he suspected. Had been willingly convinced in the past three years that Yuuri had come to his bed on orders to take control of the Plisetsky dynasty.  Yakov, for his part, had always maintained that Yuuri had waited on instructions to kill him in some subtle, untraceable way. Even Viktor had been under the impression these past three years that Yuuri had simply run out of time before Viktor enacted his own preemptive assassination. Not that he had said _no._ Three times, no less.

“Don't trouble yourself with it, my dear.” _Nikolaevich._ Viktor was a true Plisetsky son. He had earned the name through his cruelty.  Lilia Baranovskaya would be thrilled.

Okukawa Minako pressed a cool hand to his cheek, then stepped back. She was gone before her words were.  “Yuuri would never make such a mistake again.”

* * *

 

There was an art to maintaining composure when one was incredibly, undeniably fucked beyond belief. Yuuri had practiced this art too many a time for his forgetting of it now to be at all fair.

_Leave._ But he couldn't. The host could hardly disappear for the remainder of the party, not when the night was only half over.

And so Yuuri entertained guests, exchanged pleasantries, and kept a faithfully refilling flute of champagne in his hand at all times. Such things went on for an hour, and then he encountered Sara Crispino.

The Italian siblings were young. Hardly older than Mila Babicheva, hardly old enough to be as vicious as they had become in recent years. They were rather like Viktor and Yuuri had been, in that way.

In other ways, too, did they bear resemblance to the reigning couple of the past; a wicked tide of rumors followed the Crispino siblings wherever they went. The latest ones Yuuri had overheard were much too lewd for even for his type of company.

Mila Babicheva was on Crispino’s arm, and she was very drunk. She smiled, a bit sloppily, at Katsuki Yuuri.

“Katsuki,” she greeted too warmly. Yuuri had grown used to the Russian predilection for chaste kissing on every occasion, but he would prefer if Mila Babicheva did not practice it on him. He stepped smartly out of her way after her dark lips grazed his cheek. “You know Sara.”

“I do.” Yuuri looked at her coolly.  Crispino's cheeks were bright. Yuuri thought perhaps it was with embarrassment, until he spied the glass between her fingers as well.  This was simply unapologetic tipsiness, not shame. “Though I allow that it's been a few years.”

Crispino smiled, and it nearly reached her eyes. “You know that wasn't personal, Katsuki,” she chirped.  “Just business.”

“Of course.” He also knew that the last thing he wanted in the world was to have this conversation with the young woman who had cooperated with his own lover to depose him.  “Excuse me.” He bowed his head, stepped aside.  Made to leave. 

“He’s the other way,” Mila said, and Yuuri’s gaze snapped to her violently.  That had not been his intention.  Mila smiled.

But rather than kill her, Yuuri simply nodded. He was oh so tired. He lacked the energy to be cruel anymore tonight. “Yes,” he murmured, and Mila looked innocently surprised. “Thank you.”

Viktor Nikiforov was still receiving guests on the floor, even after this multitude of hours. Yuuri did not pity him; charisma was second nature to Nikiforov, and he had been born to be charming. What else was the use for such a pretty face?

Yuuri stepped beside him, and he spoke Russian.  “Exhausted yet?”

Viktor did not start, but Yuuri had known him well enough in the past to recognize the waver in his voice. “Absolutely.”

“I forgot how I hated these things,” Yuuri mused. He smiled coldly at some anonymous member of a Chinese syndicate who did not approach him further.

“I liked them,” Viktor said. He did not look at him, even now. His tone was too light. “What use is a life like this if I don't let people envy it once every year?”

Yuuri raised his eyebrows. “Is it enviable?” he murmured between the fingers of a Colombian woman whose hand he had been offered to kiss. She swept away without giving her name--a small mercy. Yuuri couldn't have been bothered to remember it anyway. 

Eyes on his face.  Yuuri met them boldly, and Viktor Nikiforov said, “Couldn't say. But isn't that what makes being envied fun?”

_If it's any consolation, he is just as terrified of you as you are of him._ Yuuri didn't know when he began to imagine Phichit Chulanont as his voice of reason. Nor when he started arguing with himself in his head.

_It’s not enough._ And it wasn't. He needed Viktor to trust him, not fear him.  Making him love him again wasn't strictly necessary--and Yuuri didn't think he would be able to stomach it either way. But he needed to have something over Viktor Nikiforov that was not simply a mirror of the debilitating fear Yuuri felt whenever he met his eyes.

Softly, Yuuri said, “I’d like to speak with you tonight, Viktor Nikiforov. Wait for me in the library.” And then, because he thought it might be appropriate, “Please.”

Lips parted in minute surprise. Gold had smudged from his eyelids to the highest part of his cheekbones, like Viktor had forgotten he was wearing makeup at all and rubbed too earnestly at his eyes.

He looked too sincere for Yuuri to bear. Something else also tugged in his chest: guilt. Yuuri didn't know where there was any foundation for guilt over his work here. He was only doing what Viktor had done to him, years before.  He was only returning the favor.  

That was what sons did for their families, after all.

Yuuri turned away, and he did not return to Viktor Nikiforov’s side until it came time for the gala to end, until the last guest had left and Okukawa Minako had bid him farewell and a sharp promise to speak to Yuuri in the morning, until Christophe Giacometti returned from the ketamine deal dripping rainwater and resentment and retired to a quieter room.  Yuuri did not stray back to Viktor Nikiforov until the house was empty again and they were alone--save for Yuri Plisetsky drifting asleep on a chaise in the main sitting room, save for Christophe Giacometti spending the night in a second floor guest room, save for the urgent, panic-inducing memory of Fuchū’s double agent in the gilded bathroom which had taken up semipermanent residence in Yuuri’s head.

Only after all these events had occurred and a quiet, almost intimate sleepiness fell over the Nikiforov estate, did Yuuri find himself making his silent way to the second floor library.

_This is what sons do for their families. This is what we do._

It sounded rather like what Viktor Nikiforov had told him, three years ago, sandstone trees clawing at the ceilings of an unfinished basilica, blood pooling on the marble. Something raw and vicious uncoiled within him at the thought.

But this, Yuuri told himself, would be different. Viktor Nikiforov deserved this. And Yuuri would feel no remorse for it.

_This is what sons do._ And if Yuuri could not atone for what he had done to the Katsuki family name, at the very least he could ensure that no one else--not Viktor Nikiforov, not Grigori Beskudnikov, and not any lackey at Fuchū--would lay a hand on them ever again, while he was alive.

That was what sons did.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tatsuki Machida, a Japanese figure skater who no longer competes, recently skated an ice show exhibition to Swan Lake as Siegfried. It's an ex in three parts, and it's incredibly good. (Machida's skating career was also real life inspiration for Yuuri's character, and his relationship with Viktor was inspired by a comment Stephane Lambiel made once about watching him skate, which was something along the lines of "it was like falling in love.") His ex is definitely worth watching here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nWyEgkM3vZk
> 
> It is mentioned previously, but the pas de deux choreography used here isn't the Bolshoi's. The written choreography is mostly copied from a previous year's production by the New York City ballet (at least, all pieces that are somewhat translatable to ballroom dance from pointe). My favorite performance I've seen of the black swan pas de deux (and I watched abt fifteen of them over and over to write this) is Maria Alexandrova of the Bolshoi in 2011. The specific performance I watched is here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lW2oxga1dNU
> 
> Most big companies, the Bolshoi and American Ballet Theater especially, cast the same ballerina as both the white swan and the black. The reasoning behind this is a plot point: the sorcerer Rothbart seeks to separate the white swan, Odette, and the prince, Siegfried, and does so by turning his daughter Odile into the black swan to dance and seduce the prince in Odette's place. Dancing this principle role in particular is very difficult, since one needs to embody both the black swan and the white, who possess two very different personalities and styles. However, the two companies do differ on endings--the ABT retains the original Tchaikovsky ending in which Siegfried and Odette both die, but the Bolshoi now uses a libretto written by Yuri Grigorovich which only separates the two, and leaves the prince alive.
> 
> If you want the video I used to pick apart NYC pas de deux steps, here it is as well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5jC_t7EK92s  
> Finally, though it really bears no relevance at all, the second half of this chapter is structured like a grand pas de deux--an entrée (the intro dance), an adagio (a slow piece), two variations (solos; the black swan typically goes first, followed by the prince), and a coda (conclusion). This isn't vital to the chapter, and really only came about because I felt uncomfortable cutting off the piece at the adagio in the chapter, so I substituted the variations with solos of a different kind--in this case, perspective changes. 
> 
> And that's all! Long notes, but only because I find ballet so interesting, and find an understanding of the basic duet piece useful. If you skipped them, know you didn't miss too much. (I also might have fucked up the spacing on this chapter but can't discern such without posting it, so if it comes out hideous I will fix it as soon as possible!)
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, comments, and kudos! Feel free to contact me on tumblr if you'd like! xx


	13. Sagrada

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for semi-graphic descriptions of blood and injuries in this one

The second time Viktor Nikiforov came to Tokyo, it was on Katsuki Yuuri’s request. Yuuri had just refused an order to kill him for the first time, and had been summoned to Kabukicho for his dissent.

Punishment for such flouting of orders had been painful. Mercifully, Okukawa Minako had not broken any bones.

“Bring him here,” she had hissed, while Yuuri had knelt quietly on the floor and bandaged his torso. His ribs would bruise. They always did. “I want to see what type of man can ruin a decade of my handiwork in a single year.”

And so Katsuki Yuuri, obediently, had invited Viktor Nikiforov to Tokyo.

On the phone, he said, “I want to show you home. And Minako wants to discuss business.” Perched carefully on his bed, Yuko shook her head. Yuuri shot her a murderous glare.

“Of course,” Viktor Nikiforov said pleasantly on the receiving end. It was two in the morning in Tokyo. Night would hardly have fallen by now in Saint Petersburg, and yet Viktor sounded charmingly sleepy. “I miss you. Nevsky is boring when you're gone.”

“I’m sure it's not,” Yuuri protested, and he smiled almost without realization. Yuko’s fingers slipped beneath the bandages on his chest and prodded a healing laceration gently. Yuuri flinched, and hissed into his phone.

“Yuuri?” The pain was climbing to his throat, clawing its way up to his temples. Minako did not break skin very often, but her discipline left lasting marks all the same. Perhaps Yuuri deserved it.

“I’m tired, _anata.”_ He pitched his voice for the same soothing affection which always swayed Viktor Nikiforov’s intentions, and it must have worked. He heard Viktor sigh into the receiver. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Yes.” A pause, and then Viktor said, “Get some sleep, Yura. Call me in the morning.”

Yuuri hung up, and the cell phone slipped from his hand to thump on the bedspread. Yuko reaffixed a bandage she had loosened in her examination of Yuuri’s torso professionally.

“I’ve never heard you speak like that to anyone, Katsuki Yuuri,” she remarked quietly. Her fingers were cool against the heat of his inflamed skin, and Yuuri closed his eyes. Tipped back his head, and very carefully thought of nothing at all. “Take care Minako never does.”

“I don't need admonishment, Yuko.” He knew exactly what he had done wrong. His body ached for it. “Please.”

“Alright,” Yuko murmured, and her hands ventured gently to his bare shoulders, where she began to knead the thick knots of muscle into something more forgiving. Yuuri nodded in silent appreciation.

“I don't like it that she hurts you,” Yuko whispered, and the words crept lightly down his spin. “You are not a child, and you are not a dog.”

“I’m an heir,” Yuuri replied sharply, as if that was justification. As if such was the end to the conversation.

The lilt to Yuko’s voice sounded as if she was smiling, but sadly. “A wayward heir,” she murmured. “Yuuri, you know why she does this to you. You are the only one of us who is not a child and still allows her to lay a hand on you.”

“I do not want to discuss this.” He knew it was true. Yuko stood up to Minako nowadays; Yuko made a habit of telling her _no_. Such were actions Yuuri could never even fathom. “Please, Yuko.”

“Yes.” Yuko pressed a chaste kiss to his shoulder. Carefully, slowly, so as not to startle him and bring bodily harm onto herself, Yuko extricated Yuuri’s left hand from his lap. Turned his arm outward and laid her own inner wrist bare beside it. Yuuri regarded the matching koi tattooed on their bodies in numb silence.

“You worry me, Yuuri.” Red koi, for fraternity. They had gotten then when Yuuri was sixteen, and Yuko seventeen. Minako had thought them horribly soft. “I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.” He said it with a ferocious conviction, as if he could persuade himself too.

“In Russia? With him? Baby.” She traced the curve of the fish’s body contemplatively. Yuuri had not realize how familiar he had become with touch in Viktor Nikiforov’s home until he had spent a few days in Tokyo and become starved for human contact. It was humiliating to admit, that he had let Viktor Nikiforov soften and mold him so easily that Yuuri could not pass even one day now without hands on him.

It was something he could never tell Minako. But Yuko didn't need telling. Yuko knew, as she knew Yuuri. As intimately as she would know herself.

“I am happy,” Yuuri repeated softly. “With him.”

“He must really be something,” Yuko replied, and her tone was carefully devoid of judgement. Yuuri was too drowsy to argue her obvious disdain and mistrust of anything which bore the Plisetsky name. He merely nodded.

“You’ll see,” he murmured, the sake Yuko had given him to soften the edge of pain in his ribs finally setting to work. Yuuri was growing tired, and each honest admission became dreamier with time. He found that he was having difficulty keeping his eyes open. His chest was warm, though pleasantly so now. Such were reasons for optimism: Yuuri would sleep off the beating, and the pain would trouble him less in the morning.

But he was leaning too heavily on Yuko. She shifted her shoulder beneath him in discomfort, and Yuuri made a quiet apologetic noise. Allowed her to disentangle from the rest of him before he blinked, several times. Already, he missed Saint Petersburg. He missed the house on Nevsky Prospekt, and he missed Viktor Nikiforov. Tokyo was less of a home than the entirety of Russia to him nowadays.

Yuko hummed something that might have been the beginning to a nursery lullaby, and Yuuri closed his eyes against the sensation of her hands in his hair. It was not quite the same as memory would have it; Yuko hadn’t touched him quite so sweetly since he had returned from America--though perhaps such was Yuuri’s own fault. He had been colder, after that. “Tell me about him. Everything about him.”

“Mmm.” Somehow his head had come to rest on her thigh, his fingers twisting thoughtlessly in the bedsheets, and he _was_ home. He didn't know how he could have forgotten. “Not everything.”

Yuko sounded as if she smiled. “I suppose you can leave some things out,” she revised. Yuuri nodded.

Softly, he said, “He does this too. Almost every night.”

“Does he?” Her fingers against his temples. Sheets somehow scratchier than Viktor Nikiforov’s. Even the air was different. Kabukicho was choked with smog, sound, eternal fluorescent light. It was a far cry from Nevsky. But it was Yuuri’s. He stood to inherit all of Tokyo, and Kabukicho was the palace. “You've always been easy to please.”

Yuuri hummed. “Yes.”

Yuko prompted, “And? What else?”

“He reads.” Inevitably, a yawn. “To...to me. Sometimes, he…” Undressed Yuuri so expertly that it was damn near an art form. Pinned him against the bedroom door, the library bookshelves, the dining room table. Spilled wine down the front of his shirt and confessions down the back, whispered what even Yuuri would not speak aloud into the base of his spine. Spread his fingers against his shoulders, his thighs, the base of his throat and made him plead in three different languages for absolution. “Hmm.”

“I see.” _Warm_. It was winter, but it did not feel like winter. Yuko’s fingers paused at his throat and Yuuri imagined he was somewhere colder. “Perhaps you should go to sleep, Yuuri.”

“Yes.” He should. The numbing heat of the two cups of sake he’d drunk would not last forever. He would hurt again soon.

“You worry me,” Yuko murmured. He wished she hadn't. He didn’t like the guilt it made him feel.

“I’m happy,” he insisted into the sheets. The curtains had never been pulled shut. The world behind his eyelids was lit red, blue, purple. Neon. “I really am.”

“I know, baby,” Yuko said. “I believe you.”

_That’s what worries me_ , she did not say.

* * *

 

“You came to Viktor Nikiforov’s home three years prior?”

Yuuri’s elbow was propped irreverently on the table. He regarded the handcuffs encircling his uninsured wrist with more interest than he did the judge. “Yes,” he drawled. He appeared, for all the world, perfectly, charmingly bored.

Viktor Nikiforov knew him better. Katsuki Yuuri was terrified.

_You've done this. You’ve made him feel this._

Nikolai Plisetsky had said similar things to him, as a teenager. When he’d made Viktor fight, when he’d made him hurt disobedient drug runners and errant informants and members of the press who had gone too far. It had been a tactic in familiarizing him with violence, as well as associating a thrill with inflicting pain.

And it had been effective. Even now, though Viktor was hesitant to admit it, the act of drawing blood was exciting to him. The entire process of taking life matters into his own hands, passing that judgment--it was thrilling. _Make them feel something._

After killing Nikolai Plisetsky, Viktor had halted young Yuri’s indoctrination in these matters. He had never reinstated the practice, and neither Lilia Baranovskaya nor Yakov Feltsman had ever protested.

“And about how much time passed until you formed an intimate relationship with him?”

On international television, Yuuri inspected his wrists. They were thinner than before, Viktor thought. “Mm. Define intimate.”

The bravado was still there, still overwhelming, but Yuuri’s eyes shifted too often to the tabletop. Minuscule tremors in his fingers further betrayed him.

And Viktor Nikiforov felt no thrill at seeing him cornered, no pleasure at Katsuki Yuuri’s terror. He shook his head, found his could not stop the shivering of his shoulders.

_You made him feel this. You deserve this_.

Lilia Baranovskaya said, “Vitenka.” He was still shaking. “Vitenka. Stop this.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are not.” Severely, crossed her arms. “You're a fool.”

“Lilia,” Viktor snapped, but someone on the television was speaking again and _damn_ Viktor for never learning proper Japanese because that meant he had to look into their faces to understand, and he was much too cowardly to do that.

“Sources had led us to believe that you...encountered Nikiforov in Tokyo three years before now. What was your occupation at the time?”

Coolly, Yuuri said, “I was a nightclub dancer.”

“Under Okukawa Minako’s employment?”

“Yes.”

“And what was the nature of your assignment to the Plisetsky syndicate?”

Yuuri blinked. “What is the nature of anything I’ve ever done, _saibankan?_ ” He tilted his head to the side playfully. “Making money.”

“Were there plans to...combine the families, Mister Katsuki? Was there ever any talk of marrying the powers?”

“Metaphorically?” Yuuri tapped the side of his nose. “Or literally?”

“Katsuki Yuuri,” the judge said severely, but it was no deterrence. Yuuri smiled.

“This is tabloid fodder, _saibankan_. If you're asking whether I knew Viktor Nikiforov in the biblical sense, I’m sure you could get more confirmation out of a scandal magazine than I will ever give you. Perhaps you’ll find video evidence of _those_ crimes too.”

The judge snapped, “I _can_ find you in contempt of the court--”

Yuuri dipped his head in acknowledgement of such. “Of course.” Then he closed his eyes. “My apologies.”

“Viktor.” Lilia again. She was standing beside him, slightly to the right of where Viktor’s head was braced against the sofa’s armrest. Her hand moved hesitantly about his crown, as if she could not decide how best to mimic motherly comfort. Abruptly, Viktor sat up.

“Turn it off.”

“Vitya--”

_“Orders,_ Lilia,” Viktor snarled, and the older woman blinked. The screen blinked off.

Viktor held her gaze fiercely. Lilia Baranovskaya had terrified him, as a child. Everything about her was severe. Sharp enough to cut. Without conscious decision to do so, Viktor had begun to emulate that sharpness in his adulthood.

He said, “Now I’m giving you orders to leave. They are effective immediately, and I don't want anyone who is not Chris letting themselves into my home for the rest of the month. Is that understood, Lilia?”

Her eyes narrowed. Historically, Lilia did not take orders. But she nodded, once. “Yes.”

“Fantastic.” He stood. “Get out.”

“This is foolish, Viktor.” As she was leaving. “You're putting the entire family in danger--”

_“Fuck_ the family,” Viktor snapped, and his old mentor flinched. And there was the thrill, the excitement at making someone frightened of him again. He welcomed it. “I've done enough for this goddamn business to pay my dues for the next decade. Fuck them all. Now get _out.”_

And she did.

Viktor sank back into the sofa, and Makkachin pawed tentatively at his calf until he shifted to allow room for the dog on the furniture as well. He would take any affection of this persuasion he could get. Only human company had become too much.

“I didn't want…” His hands fluttered in front of his eyes. “I didn't want to…” Makka rested his head on his leg and gazed at him plaintively. Viktor stopped talking.

He had never wanted to kill Katsuki Yuuri.

That had been the whole point in turning him in, in letting the Italians and the police do the heavy lifting. Call it cowardice, but Viktor Nikiforov could not kill the man he’d loved.

“Mila and Georgi have Plisetsky,” Yuuri had told him quietly, and Viktor had nodded. His thoughts were occupied by other things, and the retrieval of the family heir was damn near insignificant to him now.

The church. That’s where he’d been told to go. The church.

“When was the last time you’ve been to Barcelona, Yuuri?” Viktor murmured. Yuuri looked at him and blinked.

“I’ve never been.”

“Really?” _I’m sorry._ “What a way to see the city then.”

“There are better methods.” Yuuri’s fingers, wrapped around the inside of his elbow, tightened briefly. The air was bitingly cold. Behind them, Christophe Giacometti snapped into his phone in vicious Italian.

“Yes,” Viktor murmured. He tipped his head back and surveyed the unfinished spires of the basilica. One hundred and thirty years, and the piece remained undone. Twenty more, and it would be complete.

Somehow, he was speaking, and found he could not stop. Words fell from his mouth like to swallow them would be suffocation, and Viktor imagined that it would be. Guilty silence was filling his lungs.

“When we marry,” he said urgently, beneath the spires of an unfinished basilica, Yuuri’s fingers curling against his coat again. “When we marry, Yuuri, I want it to be in a place like this.”

Yuuri hummed. “Okay,” he murmured, as if he doubted Viktor’s conviction to such a promise. Frantic and choking as he was, Viktor couldn't fathom why he would ever doubt. The vows were sincere.

“It'd probably have to be Orthodox, in Saint Petersburg, of course,” he continued, voice rising in thin panic. “And perhaps we’d have to sacrifice grandeur for privacy, in the long run. But there are so many gilded churches decaying in the old town--” He forced himself to stop. His fingers were numb, and he could not recall a word of what he had just said. Too much that was too honest, surely. “Would--would that be alright? Would that make you happy?”

Yuuri did not look at him as they stepped over the basilica threshold. Some unknown time before, his grip had loosened on Viktor’s arm. His hand hung empty at his side now.

“Of course, Vitya,” he murmured, and Viktor’s mouth went dry. This was evil, what he was about to do. There was no forgiving it. “Anything at your side would make me happy.”

Viktor Nikiforov whispered, “Thank you.” For a single instant, he closed his eyes. “Thank you.”

There was a dias in the center of the floor, before the altar. Yuuri stood on it, and when he turned to Viktor Nikiforov his chin was tipped up to reveal his pale throat. His palms turned outward, exposing one of the few places of unmarked skin left on his body. He was a painting, a sight fit for the Byzantine icons of any house of worship.

Viktor was in awe of him.

Yuuri’s eyes drifted to the high, high ceilings. It was clouded in Barcelona that night, and the colored glass of the windows cast very muted shadows over his face. Quietly, he sighed.

“You know, Viktor, what I would do for you.” Dark eyelashes feathered against his cheeks. Viktor wanted to touch him so, so badly. He wanted to say fuck it all--fuck Yakov, and Yuri Plisetsky, and the Italian deal, and all the vile, whispered uncertainties that had led him to this. He wanted to keep Katsuki Yuuri as he was--wanted to keep him _his_. “And what I would do for Yura too. You know that.”

“Yes,” Viktor whispered. His voice had an edge of begging to it now. “Yes, I know.”

“So I want you to remember that, love.” Yuuri looked at him squarely now. “When you do what you’ve come here to do. Don’t make this about anything else.”

_Jesus_. Did he know? Surely not. The very idea was impossible. “I--I don't understand.”

“Yes,” Katsuki Yuuri said. “You do.”

Yuuri knew. He did.

It was a curious thing to feel, mourning for someone who was not yet dead. Viktor couldn't remember the last time he had mourned even the deceased, and yet here he was. Coming to pieces over a man who did not appear to feel any regret over his own betrayal.

What a terrible, remarkable thing it must have been to be Katsuki Yuuri. The man had been raised from childhood as a soldier, an heir, a tithe. He must have been achingly familiar with what it felt like to be a sacrifice by now.

Yuuri made the act of steeling his grip on his handgun slightly easier by turning his back on Viktor Nikiforov.

“Let’s go,” he said, all the tenderness dissipated from his voice now. He sounded annoyed. As if he was embarrassed by Viktor’s inability to put him down cleanly. Surely Yuuri would have done so to him; spared Viktor the humiliation, and done what he’d come to do without preamble. “I’m bored.”

“Bored?” Now Viktor was incredulous. “How could you be _bored?”_

Simply, Katsuki Yuuri said, “I want to get this over with.”

He seemed to have no intention of leaving the center of the floor. Viktor wondered if he expected him to shoot him from a distance, like one would execute a fucking dog. Did he think Viktor that cruel?

Viktor Nikiforov removed his hand from the gun.

He sighed. “Fine.” He strode to Yuuri, and took his wrist gently into his own hand. Yuuri stiffened at the contact, and Viktor mourned a time when his touch would have the exact opposite effect. He used to be able to bring Yuuri willingly to his knees with just this: a light hand at his wrist. “Fine. But come here.”

Would it be unfair to kiss him? Would that be too cruel, to take that from him along with his autonomy? Viktor didn't know. He wasn't thinking clearly. He said, “Yuuri,” as if the two syllables would give him answers.

_“What?”_ Yuuri hissed, finally angry now, turning to him too quickly for Viktor to process his selected course of action. He was starving. He needed this, even if it would provide no absolution in the years to come.

Viktor caught Katsuki Yuuri’s mouth on the edge of an insult, his gloved hands immediately slipping to the back of his neck and his scalp, and he kissed him.

And Katsuki Yuuri did not soften. He did not melt, nor sink into Viktor’s chest like he always did. Nor did he recoil. He simply stood there, deathly still, and he spat against his mouth, “Don’t fucking touch me with your gloves on.”

Chastened, Viktor paused. His hands--gloved, admittedly--were curved seamlessly on his jaw. He held Yuuri’s face between his hands for several timeless seconds, and the best he could manage was a whispered half-plea.

“Yuuri…”

Evidently finding such half-assed apologies distasteful, Katsuki Yuuri endured them no longer. His fingers hooked into Viktor’s scalp, his other hand scrabbling fiercely for purchase against the back of his neck, and yanked Viktor’s mouth to his again.

And he began to cry.

Dimly, Viktor wondered what price proof that Katsuki wept, like a real human being, would fetch on the market. Not that he would ever consider selling such information--Viktor despised the organized press now as much as Yuuri always had. But tabloids and respectable journals alike had run rabidly sensational stories about the both of them for years. Viktor Nikiforov was usually awarded the role of charming sociopath. Katsuki Yuuri was painted from a rather less flattering angle.

_Please don't cry._ Viktor could handle anger, could rationalize and justify rage, but reception methods for tears were lost on him. Anyway, who was Katsuki Yuuri, to think sadness was more pressing an emotion than bitter rage? Had their roles been exchanged, Viktor would have been much angrier at his execution.

But perhaps that was the difference between the two of them.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor whispered, against his mouth, his jaw, his throat. Yuuri tilted his chin up to the stained glass to allow Viktor more surface to claim. He did not say a word. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m--”

“Viktor.” His tone was not tender, but Viktor could imagine it to be so, with a touch of willful ignorance. He needed this.

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry._

_I love you._

And he did, and he had said it before--many times--but the acknowledgement of the fact now nearly broke him. How could he love Katsuki Yuuri, if he would do this to him? How could he presume to be capable of loving, if this was what he did to the most important men in his life?

“Viktor.” _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry._ He could not be sure if the mantra was confined to his head or not. “Shut up.”

“I--”

“I said.” Yuuri’s voice grew unbearably cold. His pulse, beneath his jaw, was frantic. Viktor buried his face in the curve of his throat. “Shut the fuck up.”

And Viktor Nikiforov did. He made no more apologies. Behind them, Christophe Giacometti expressed something in furious Italian that probably meant they were out of time.

_I’m so very sorry._ And then the part of Viktor that was capable of apology switched itself off.

He withdrew from Katsuki Yuuri gently. His fingers slipped away from the back of his neck, and even as he folded one gloved hand against the curve of Yuuri’s jaw, Viktor was drawing his gun.

He had obsessed over this moment, in the past several weeks. How he would execute the scene, where he would shoot him, how he would fall. The only way he had seemed to cope with the concept was by becoming enraptured with the mechanics of it all. Depersonalizing it, and depersonalizing himself along with it.

For Viktor Nikiforov was not a man. He had never been raised to be such. And though some might argue that Viktor Nikiforov was a monster, this theory was also found lacking. Monsters had wills of their own. Weapons did not.

And Viktor Nikiforov was most certainly a weapon.

His arm was the only practical target. His shoulder would also be nonlethal, but from this distance and this angle the shot was impossible. The stomach, the leg, anywhere else on the torso would kill him, in too short timeframes and with varying degrees of excruciating pain.

The handgun itself was silenced, and thus the sound of the shot was relatively muffled. The sound of eleven millimeters of metal shattering the bones in Katsuki Yuuri’s arm, the way he gasped like he had not been expecting Viktor to actually go _through_ with it--there was no silencing such things.

Viktor Nikiforov felt a touch of remorse at the inevitable bloodstains on his coat.

Considering the impact of the bullet, and the close range at which he had been shot, Viktor had not expected Yuuri to fall forward. But he did--perhaps in hopes that he would not shatter his skull on the dias with someone to break his fall--and Viktor caught him tenderly by the waist. Folded him into his chest in a perverse imitation of what Viktor had wanted when he kissed him.

Everything about this was so very evil. Yuuri panted something in thick Japanese against his collar.

“It’s only a flesh wound, love,” Viktor informed quietly, his hand cradling Yuuri’s head against his shoulder, tracing gentle patterns against the beginning of his spine. “The most it will do is bleed.”

And burn. Contact shots were doubly cruel, burning the skin’s surface with residual powder as well as dealing extensive tissue damage. Yuuri would survive, but he would bear the mark of gunpowder burns along with his scars.

Viktor did his best to forget this.

Katsuki Yuuri did not speak. He didn't do much of anything, in fact, and vaguely Viktor wondered if shock had shut his body down upon impact. But he was still standing--albeit with Viktor to support him. And he was still breathing, in little ragged gasps against his shoulder. Perhaps he simply had nothing to say.

Viktor had decided that he would hold him only long enough for Yuuri to lose the strength to follow. Of course, the problem with a nonlethal injury was that Katsuki Yuuri was strong, and if he was so inclined he could manage to leave the basilica before the police arrived. But the shock of an injury combined with a decent amount of blood loss would render him useless, in short time. All Viktor had to do was wait.

Against his shoulder, Katsuki Yuuri managed, “I--I don’t…”

“Shh,” Viktor whispered soothingly, slipping a supportive arm around his waist as Yuuri grew heavier. There was blood on his coat, and his gloves. The soles of his shoes were slick with it. “You'll be alright. You’ll be alright.”

He would be. Viktor told himself so. He was very good at lying.

“I...didn’t…” His speech was soft and slurring now, thick with Viktor’s favorite of his many accents. How fitting, that the humble country origins he tried so valiantly to hide would betray him now. “I didn't want…”

Now Viktor frowned. Perhaps this was progressing too quickly. If Yuuri bled out before the police arrived, the entire Italian deal would be ruined. And Viktor couldn't afford that.

“Darling,” he murmured, touching his mouth tenderly to Yuuri’s hair. “You’ll be alright. You've had worse, haven't you? I know you have.”

In fact, he didn't think Yuuri had ever been shot. He’d never told him so, and Viktor had never seen any evidence of such on any part of his body. Perhaps this was a first.

“You’re so strong, you'll be alright,” Viktor repeated, as Katsuki Yuuri began to shiver against him. Viktor wondered how he was going to explain this to Yuri Plisetsky. It wasn't a bit like killing Nikolai. “You'll be alright, love. I’m going to set you down now, okay? It will feel better that way, I promise.”

He thought maybe Yuuri nodded. Or maybe the shivering had just progressed to full tremors already. Regardless, as Viktor laid him gently on the cool marble floor, Yuuri’s lips were tinged blue.

“Oh, Yuuri,” Viktor whispered, and curiously he felt as if he might be brought to tears himself. _You’ve done this. You’ve made him feel this._ There was no thrill to the thought. Rather, it might’ve made him sick. “You’ll be okay, darling. I promise.”

Yuuri’s eyes fluttered closed, and it did not appear he planned on correcting the situation anytime soon. His lips moved imperceptibly, and Viktor knelt beside him in an effort to understand.

“I can't--” Something inside him recoiled, and Viktor frowned. The impersonal high he’d been nursing in order to commit this awful act faltered, just a bit. “I can't hear you, Yura.”

He dipped his head a bit further to catch the words, and the whisper stirred his hair against his face. And, finally, he understood.

_You’ll be alright, Yura. You’ll be alright. I promise._

Delirious, shell-shocked Katsuki Yuuri was reciting Viktor’s own assurances to himself.

_Oh. Oh._ Waves crashed against a shore Viktor would never visit, and he drowned in the waters.

“Yuuri--” He reached out to him, cradled his head between his hands, and Yuuri did nothing to deter him. But was it vile to touch him now too? Had Viktor ruined this for himself as well?

As a child, Yakov and Lilia had taken him to the Vatican, and thirteen-year-old Viktor had stood before the Pieta and felt something akin to this. An inexorable sense of grief. When he was thirteen, it had been for the art, a conceptual grasp of what it must be like to experience something like _that_ , cradling the body of a loved one in one’s lap. Now, the grief was for himself, because he knew what it was like, and it was no longer a hypothetical sense of mourning.

But perhaps that was only a comparison based on hubris. Yes, Viktor Nikiforov was terribly ruined. But he had done it to himself. And, despite their stained-glass surroundings, there was no higher power present here.

A sharp moment of clarity seemed to descend upon them both. Viktor laid Yuuri back onto the marble. “S’cold,” Yuuri mumbled against the floor.

And entirely of another being’s volition, Viktor stripped himself of his coat and cast it about Yuuri’s shoulders. Pathetically, he entreated, “Is that--is that better?”

“No.” Yuuri shook his head weakly. His eyes remained closed. “Don’t...want that.”

“You’ll freeze,” Viktor admonished, reaching wonderingly outward to place his thumb against Yuuri’s lips. God, there was blood everywhere. The leather of his gloves was marked with soot from the same powder that had tattooed itself against Yuuri’s skin. How unseemly.

But Katsuki Yuuri remained remarkable. Even now, the edge to his voice was diamond-hard. “Take it back.”

Quickly, Viktor withdrew his hand. Then he realized that Yuuri had most likely meant the coat.

From his watchman’s place near the entrance, Christophe Giacometti snapped, _“Viktor._ That’s enough. Time to leave.”

Sirens wailed from a distance, climbing fifty meters to the cavernous ceilings and echoing to the walls. Viktor blinked and remembered himself.

He stood, and as he did so he plucked his coat from about Katsuki Yuuri’s shoulders. Yuuri did not protest, though his mouth became a silent mimicry of a whimper as the heavy fabric tugged on his arm. Now there would be blood on the lining too. Viktor never did stop to think.

However. Small mercies were bestowed upon those who deserved them, and Viktor Nikiforov must have been one of the deserving, for his mind cleared. He blinked. Standing now, he felt almost as if he had been removed from the situation. At the very least, he felt as if he had a greater grasp on the outcome. He was alright. He was in control. There was a body at his feet, but it was of no significance to him.

Professionally, Viktor Nikiforov intoned, “Thank you. I will ensure that Yuri Plisetsky knows the reason.”

And serenely, Viktor turned on his heel and walked away.

* * *

 

Viktor was waiting for him in the library. Yuuri had sobered up quite a bit, and he was beginning to feel quite distinctly like he had been dragged through hell and back by an indeterminate hand. The sensation was mostly unpleasant.

“You wanted to speak to me,” Viktor said quietly, and Yuuri nodded. His face was a bit numb. He couldn't feel the tips of his fingers, they had gone so cold.

“I’d like to make it quick, if you don't mind.” He was leaning against a shelf, and his forced bravado was transparent. “I’m tired.”

Yes, and he looked it. Yuuri found he could sympathize.

Carefully, he said, “I didn't invite Minako with the intentions of having her interrogate you.” Nor did he with an invitation to spill Yuuri’s secrets. He had no way of knowing what his old mentor had told Viktor, but he was sure it was roundly humiliating. “Whatever she threatened you with, feel free to disregard it.”

“Mm.” Viktor’s mouth thinned in displeasure. “Frankly, I don't care for her presence at all.”

Coldly, Yuuri replied, “Well, that is your issue.” Then, realizing the bitterness of his tone, he paused. Collected himself. “She won't stay long. I’d have preferred Yuko’s company, in all honesty. But--”

The picture of serenity, Viktor surveyed his cuticles while he supplied his answer. “You're too kind to put her in that sort of danger.”

“Don't presume a _thing_ about my kindness, Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri snarled, and Viktor faltered.

In the darkness, his fluttering hands looked like ghostly things. Viktor raised them in an entreaty for forgiveness. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean--”

“I don't care.” Jesus. Did he not know how to be gentle anymore? His life depended on it, and all Yuuri knew was ferocity. And it was justified, surely, but it would get him nowhere. _Be soft._

Yuuri dipped his head in penitence. “I’m sorry. I’m tired.”

“Yes.” Viktor regarded him with an expression that was both parts curious and wary. He reminded him, “You wanted to speak to me about something specific.”

No, not really. Yuuri could hardly remember what had inspired this ill-advised plan. Vaguely, he recalled a desperate desire to leave Nevsky Prospekt and never come back. He remembered now that doing so required the closure that destroying Viktor Nikiforov would bring.

Yuuri tipped his chin upward. The action made his head spin. “I want to…” Closed eyes. Outward-turned palms. The picture of saintly absolution. “I want to start over, I think.”

Softly, incredulously, Viktor asked, “You do?”

Yuuri didn't dare open his eyes. He knew if he did he would have to look at him, and he couldn't bear the thought of it. Instead, he merely nodded. His throat was tight enough to choke him.

“Yes,” he whispered. “That's what I want.”

“Oh, Yuuri.” Terribly, Viktor sounded sincere. He sounded _sad_. Who was he to think he had _any_ right--

_Soft_. Yuuri imagined he was twenty-three again, and that he was soft. He opened his eyes.

Viktor had drawn away from the bookcase. He was standing now at a distance from Katsuki Yuuri, and his hands were empty at his sides. This was a detail on which Yuuri became horribly fixated for a reason he could not place. Try as he might, he couldn't tear his gaze away.

Viktor Nikiforov said quietly, “I know there's no--no forgiving what’s happened--”

“No,” Yuuri said firmly. He was shaking his head, and then he found he could not stop. _Christ_. He was going to come to tears right here, wasn't he? “No, you're right. There isn't.”

“When you say _start over,_ you mean--”

“I mean that I will remain in charge.” Yuuri couldn't help it. The iciness returned, as it always did when he was afraid. “And you will still answer to me, and I will not trust you like I had six years ago, Viktor Nikiforov.” Yuuri shook his head. “But I will not return your favor.”

_Liar_. It felt good, to have turned Viktor’s legacy back upon him.

“Minako--Minako said...” Viktor’s voice faltered. Yuuri held his gaze fiercely. “Minako said she gave you orders to…”

“Yes.” An ache echoed against his ribs. “I never had any intentions to follow them.”

“Oh.” What about him inspired Yuuri’s pity so eagerly? Viktor Nikiforov had ruined his life, and yet Yuuri was damned near ready to _forgive_ him for it. The wonders of a gentle voice and pretty face. “I’m so very sorry, Yuuri.”

“That information is entirely irrelevant to me,” Yuuri said brusquely. One could only be soft for so long, after all. “I’m going to bed. There’s a child asleep in the first floor sitting room with your dog who should be delivered to a room with a lock.”

Viktor waved off the suggestion tiredly. “Altin will take care of him.”

“Otabek Altin is asleep in the same sitting room, and is surely also in want of a bed.” Yuuri raised his eyebrows. “The peril of employing teenagers is that they have bedtimes, Vitya.”

_Vitya_. It had been so long since he’d called him sincerely by that name. Yuuri hadn't meant to do it now. It had simply--slipped out.

Viktor Nikiforov looked at him, and he blinked. Compulsively, he whispered, “Oh. I was so in love with you.”

And Yuuri flinched as if the words themselves had struck him. But he didn't care. He didn't.

“Also irrelevant,” he drawled, like it did not hurt him. Like the confession was simply an embarrassment on Viktor’s part, and Katsuki Yuuri had absolutely no investment in the tale. “Please refrain from lying to me from now on, Viktor.”

“It's not--” He was too close suddenly, and he was _touching him,_ and Yuuri could not take it. Viktor’s fingers closed around his wrist like an afterthought, and Yuuri resented that he still felt so entitled to his body to touch him without permission.

Then there was something else: a creeping imagined scenario in which Viktor Nikiforov’s fingers slipped past the edge of his sleeve, his touch light enough that Yuuri derived no pain from it, though his body was lit aflame beneath his skin, though he was half certain he was coming to irrevocable pieces, and suddenly Yuuri was wearing no jacket and his sleeves were no object and Viktor was running his fingers along the seared, bloodied flesh of his arm.

And where he touched him, Katsuki Yuuri felt no pain. His mouth fell open in quiet surprise at whatever miracle was being performed for his benefit, and only for a fleeting moment did Yuuri consider the reason behind it was that he might be dying.

Instead, he marveled at the way the damage to his arm was more fascinating that hideous, when he could look at it objectively--when he felt nothing at all. There was blood soaking the skin, and everywhere the powder had burned the flesh and the ink from his arm was the tender pink of damaged vital tissues. Within the exposed wound he could see fragments of bone, shattered on impact with eleven millimeters of metal. It was doubtful the injury would ever heal adequately. Yuuri found he did not care. Nothing within him felt pain, nor any shard of grief. Viktor had absolved him of that.

Softly, as if he could not bear to give voice to the confession, Viktor Nikiforov said, “It was true.”

There, the dream ended. Yuuri tightened his jaw and thought how _dare_ he, how dare he touch him and make him feel these things against his will. Yuuri would make him bleed.

_Do not kill him._ But persuading himself not to do so was difficult. He was so close, and Yuuri was so _angry--_

_Do not kill him._

Yuuri thought, fleetingly, of Katsuki Mari.

Deep breath. Katsuki Yuuri did not crush the bones in his hand. Rather, he said coolly, “Clearly, Viktor, it hadn’t been enough. Now do not touch me if you want to keep your fingers.”

Viktor removed his hand from his wrist.

This was not what _starting over_ should have been. But Yuuri was simply too damaged to be forgiving, and he was too proud to simply pretend he was. And he _liked_ the rage. It gave him something to feel that was not terror.

“I’m going to bed.” Concedingly, Viktor stepped quietly away from him, and Yuuri was grateful. Now he had some room to breathe. “Do you want to handle Plisetsky, or should I?”

Viktor shook his head. “I’ll take care of it.” Perhaps he still did not trust Yuuri around his heir. Perhaps the decision was wise. His expression was aggrieved, as if he had lost something irreplaceable. “Good night, Yuuri.”

“Thank you.” Yuuri turned his back purposefully on Viktor Nikiforov and suppressed the trembling of his shoulders. “Good night, Viktor.”

* * *

 

The immediate aftermath of leaving Katsuki Yuuri to bleed out in a Spanish basilica passed like a fever dream.

Viktor was dimly aware of Chris’ grip tightening on his arm, steering him in a rational direction. He was speaking too, dealing asinine advice which Viktor had no energy nor intent to follow.

“For Christ’s sake, put your coat on, Vik.” It was not the first time he had bade him to do so. “Jesus. Now’s not the time for this.”

“I’m fine.” He wasn't sure who’d said so. Certainly Viktor had no memory of it.

“Like hell you are. Jesus. Get in the car.” Viktor got in the car. “Try not to get blood on the seats.” Viktor got blood on the seats. “Jesus Christ.”

“I--” He couldn't fathom an appropriate response. Viktor settled for a gentle frown as Chris slid into the seat beside him.

“It’s shock,” his best friend told him brusquely. “You’re in shock.”

“I don't--” Hm. Perhaps there was some foundation to the theory. “I don't feel like I’m in shock.”

“Yes, Viktor. That’s the point.” Chris looked him in the face, and then he sighed. “Keep it together until the trip home, got it? I’ll be as sympathetic as you like then. But right now is business.”

Numbly, Viktor Nikiforov nodded. After a moment’s pause, Chris rubbed at a spot of dried blood on his cheek in a gesture which was almost motherly.

“Are you injured at all?”

“No.”

“You're sure?” Chris cast a dubious look at the crimson soaking his sleeves. “That's all his?”

“Yes.”

Chris blinked. “Damn.”

Viktor Nikiforov tasted copper on his tongue. He hoped he’d be this numb for the rest of his life. The absence of feeling was almost comforting.

The chauffeur said something in bored Italian, and Chris replied in kind. The Crispino siblings had supplied the car and its driver, and Viktor hadn't bothered to argue. Operating under the orders of someone else was easier than dispensing his own.

Too soon, the Benz came to a stop, and then Chris was yanking Viktor out of the backseat, thanking the driver in few short words, and slamming the door with a ferocity which made Viktor wince. Christophe Giacometti attempted to tug the bloodstained bundle of Viktor’s coat from his arms, to little success. He sighed, then shrugged out of his own jacket and slung it over his shoulders.

“You’ll freeze,” he chastised, as if one could possibly freeze in Barcelona regardless of the time of year, and the familiar phrase made Viktor flinch. “Hey. Just a few more minutes, alright?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll keep Mila out of your way, if it helps.”

“That would be…” _Nice_ , he’d meant to say. He was distracted by the fact that he'd begun to shiver rather violently. “Thank you,” he whispered instead.

“Mhmm.” Chris led him onto the airstrip at a brisk pace. An unmarked aircraft waited impatiently on the tarmac. “Want to give me your coat now?”

“No.”

“Alright,” Chris said agreeably, and Viktor blinked. He _was_ cold. The numbness was no longer a welcome feeling. Viktor felt as if his surroundings had become blurred, a poor artist’s rendering of what was surely not real life.

He wondered if Katsuki Yuuri had been arrested yet. He wondered if he had been conscious for the event.

He wondered if he had gotten blood beneath Viktor’s gloves.

“Fucking hell,” greeted nineteen-year-old Mila Babicheva, but the rest of what she had intended to say was muffled by Christophe Giacometti’s hand closing over the majority of her face.

“Not now please,” he said calmly, then released her before she fancied biting his hand. “Save it for later.”

“Suck my dick, Giacometti,” Mila spat, but she heeded his warning and slunk away to her own seat. Georgi Popovich stood from where he had been tending to an unconscious Yuri Plisetsky, and his mouth opened in gentle surprise.

“Oh,” he said, though if it was at the sheer amount of blood on Viktor’s person or the absence of Katsuki Yuuri or any number of other things, Viktor could not discern. “You really did it.”

“Obviously,” Chris snapped, shoving Viktor into his own seat without particular tenderness. “How’s the kid?”

Mila crossed her ankles over the headrest of a seat across the aisle from Viktor. “Bruised, but less than battered. Georgi gave him something over the counter to knock him out. Should be quiet until we land.”

“Do you have any tact?” Georgi replied bitterly. “At all?”

Without turning around to face him, Mila made a rude gesture over the top of her own seat. Chris scowled.

“The others?”

Mila inspected her nails boredly. “Feltsman will be here soon. He’s wrapping up all the ends Vitya left loose. Leroy and Ji are staying the week to make sure nothing falls through.” She tapped a finger to her lips. “That's all. Came with eight. Left with six. We’re set.”

“You really are evil--” Georgi began heatedly, but stopped immediately when a second voice matched his own.

Quietly, Viktor said, “If you both don't shut up, I’m going to slit you open along every vital artery you possess and watch you bleed out before we reach altitude.”

Silence. Chris turned partway to blink at him with an expression of mild displeasure. Mila’s lips parted in elegant awe. Viktor Nikiforov closed his eyes, because his head had begun to hurt, and added, “So please. Stop.”

“Yes, sir,” Mila mumbled. “Sorry, sir.” Behind her, Georgi whispered something indistinct but clearly penitent.

Speaking had exhausted him. Viktor hadn’t meant to, and he had no idea from what part of him the words had come unbidden. They were not his genre of threats.

The muffled sound of Chris sitting beside him prompted Viktor to open his eyes, just barely. He was so tired. He was terrified by the mere possibility of dreaming.

“This will let you sleep,” Chris offer him a nondescript white pill cupped in his hand. Sleeping medication. Viktor had never thought to take it. Ketamine did the same thing, if one ingested enough of it. “If you want.”

Viktor did want. He accepted the offer silently and took the dose dry. Christophe Giacometti watched him with a gently piteous expression which Viktor loathed.

“Can I take these off for you?” His touch lingered at the wrists. Bloodstained and blackened with soot, Viktor’s gloves would be forever marked by what he had done in Barcelona tonight. Quietly, he nodded.

It was no small concession. Christophe had never once removed his gloves for him since they had reached adulthood. Viktor thought the act much too intimate nowadays, and he usually left the business of his gloves and what laid beneath them to Yuuri. Viktor himself hardly cared for his hands anymore.

But Christophe had, years ago. Seventeen-year-old, infatuated Christophe had worshipped his hands as he had worshiped every centimeter of Viktor Nikiforov, and Viktor thought perhaps they both remembered now as he tugged the leather efficiently over the heels of his palms. How much they had grown, and how different they had become.

“They're clean,” Chris said softly of Viktor’s bare fingers, and Viktor saw that they were. How curious, that Chris had known his fears of finding them soaked permanently with blood. How brave, to openly acknowledge it. “You’re alright, Vik. You're alright.”

Wonderingly, Viktor inspected his palms, the beds of his nails, the ridges of his knuckles. All were much too clean, and much too pretty. The gold band Yuuri had given him a year ago still gleamed on his ring finger.

“Yes,” Viktor intoned mechanically, and he was alright, even if he did not deserve it. Objectively, he was better off now than he had been in the past three years. “I’ll be alright.”

He did not realize he was tearful until Chris pulled him into his chest and Viktor felt his cheeks heated with embarrassment. He was _crying_. In front of his highest command, no less. He didn't think Mila had ever seen him cry, and he was not pleased that this occasion would be her first exposure to such.

“Yes,” Chris repeated, with conviction this time. “Now sleep. I’ll handle Feltsman, and I’ll wake you when we’re home.” His hand came to rest lightly between his shoulders. “I’ll take care of everything else.”

And he did, and when Viktor woke in Saint Petersburg the next morning in his own bed (Chris claimed he’d woken him before arriving at Nevsky, though Viktor had no memory of any such exchange), Chris dozing charitably in his desk chair, it never even occurred to Viktor to thank him.

It rarely ever occurred to Viktor Nikiforov to thank his best friend, in the months to pass. Even when Viktor barred the staff from treading the halls of his home, reducing the house kitchens to the barest bones of a functional body, and Christophe Giacometti helped to cook his meals for a full month. Even when Viktor was sick, constantly, from a steady intake of hard drugs and little else, and Chris peeled him off the bathroom tile and coaxed food and water into him and rubbed his shoulders when even these innocuous things inevitably ended up vomited into the tub as well.

Even when Viktor did not speak for days, even when he did not sleep save for short three-hour intervals in which he did more nightmarish dreaming than anything else, even when Chris climbed chastely into his bed and held him and allowed a deliriously grieving Viktor to call him by the incorrect name--even then.

Even then Chris did not receive gratitude, nor did he ask for it, and perhaps this bred resentment between them but Chris never stopped. He continued, because that's what friends who used to be in love with one who didn't love them back _did_.

And Viktor Nikiforov realized then, as he had with Yuuri years ago in the first time he had witnessed him soft and malleable and wonderful, that he did not deserve Christophe Giacometti. That he did not deserve any of the kind men in his life, because Viktor was so unfamiliar with kindness that he did not know how to reciprocate. That cruelty was in his blood, and it was not blood he shared with the likes of Giacometti and Katsuki.

The thought made him sick again, and he did not thank Christophe when he knelt beside him for twenty minutes, tracing undefined shapes on his palms to serve as a distraction from the bitter trembling which wracked him. He didn't thank him at all.

* * *

 

Otabek Altin was a light sleeper.

Not light enough to catch Katsuki Yuuri slipping quietly into the room, and not light enough to know for how long Katsuki stood at a distance from him and Yuri Plisetsky and considered the best way to go about saving Altin from a beating.

But light enough that when Katsuki Yuuri touched him softly on the shoulder and watched, he stiffened. And then he was awake.

“Nikiforov disapproves of sleeping on duty,” Yuuri said, and Altin observed him suspiciously but said nothing. “I’m saving you punishment.”

And still Altin was silent, though his eyes narrowed and his fingers curled imperceptibly against his thigh and every centimeter of him was noticeably electric with nerves. Yuri Plisetsky, who had been observed drinking perhaps a few too many glasses of wine during the early hours of the gala, did not stir.

Yuuri shrugged. He removed his hand from Otabek’s shoulder and stepped backward. Makkachin, sleeping at the foot of the sofa, lifted his head at the movement and whined lowly for Yuuri’s attention.

“I have no intentions to hurt you, Altin. Nor do I Yuri Plisetsky.” Yuuri blinked. He was exhausted. It was a concentrated effort to keep his words from running tipsily into one another. “You do your job well. I don't want to see you punished for a mistake like this.”

“I don't need your advice.” Quietly. Altin was nineteen, and he was afraid. Yuuri took pity.

“Maybe not.” Yuuri extended a hand invitingly to the poodle on the floor, and Makka scrambled to his feet to resituate himself at Yuuri’s feet. Yuuri placed an appreciative hand on the dog’s head. “Please forgive me for being presumptuous, then.”

Altin regarded him carefully. “Thank you,” he said, even more carefully. Yuuri nodded. Makkachin licked at his hand, and Yuuri scratched his ears indulgently. He took another step back, and his gaze drifted lazily to Yuri Plisetsky.

“Perhaps a bit more presumptuous advice, Altin,” Yuuri said. “You--the both of you, but I impart special favor to the second in command--have an ally in me. Do not throw away that opportunity for the sake of purity.”

Otabek Altin blinked, and then he nodded. He said nothing more, and Yuuri did not force conversation out of him. He dipped his head respectfully, and then Yuuri left the room. Happily, Viktor’s dog followed.

Yuuri cast a decidedly amused look down at the poodle as he padded along beside him. “You've got the wrong man, Makka,” he said softly, drawing his fingers through thick brown fur. “He’s upstairs.”

Predictably, this did nothing to deter him. Makkachin had always been stubborn; he was much like his master in this regard.

“Alright.” Yuuri smiled ruefully. “He won’t be happy with me.”

His only reply was a distinctly pleased pant. Yuuri reached his own bedroom door and pushed it open, allowing Makka to invite himself inside first. He did so, immediately leaping onto Yuuri’s bed and making himself at home at the foot of the duvet.

The door closed and locked behind him, Yuuri put the heels of his palms to his eyes and scrubbed tiredly. His hands came away alabaster white, and Yuuri remembered belatedly the paint over his eyelids. He waved a marked hand somewhat accusingly at the dog sprawled on his bed.

“If he kills me for your kidnapping, I will hold it against you.”

In response, Makkachin rolled onto his back and exposed his belly for petting.

Undressing himself was an impossible feat which begged for simultaneous cooperation between his fingers and his brain. Scrubbing the persistent crawling sensation from his skin was even more difficult. By the time Katsuki Yuuri had turned over the sheets and climbed between them, Viktor’s dog shuffling gradually closer until he was pressed determinedly against Yuuri’s thighs, the clock was edging on four in the morning.

Yuuri traced thoughtful patterns on the fitted sheet beneath him. Tranquilly, he said, “He’s going to be very angry with me for stealing you away, Makka.” The poodle huffed. Yuuri closed his eyes and smiled a fraction of a smile. “But I suppose it doesn't matter, does it?”

Katsuki Yuuri woke once, within the hour, plagued by something that may have been the beginnings of a nightmare but was most likely just a dream. His hands roamed for something by which to ground themselves and found purchase in the dog’s coat, whereupon he drifted immediately back asleep. The dream was waiting for him when he did, but Katsuki Yuuri found he did not mind any longer.

He had not visited his childhood home in a decade. He had never brought Viktor Nikiforov to Hasetsu to visit ever in his lifetime. This is how Yuuri recognized the characteristics of a dream.

They were in Yuuri’s bedroom--the one he had slept in until he was thirteen--and they were dancing.

But it was not the dancing with which Yuuri was intimately familiar, which meant it was neither calculatedly beautiful nor for the consumption of an ever-hungry audience. This was something more akin to the dancing he imagined young couples might initiate in their kitchens in the early hours of the morning: drowsy smiles, sloppy turns, Viktor’s thumb wearing slowly but surely at the the line of Yuuri’s shoulder, Yuuri’s head tucked into the angle beneath Viktor’s chin. In the dream, Yuuri wondered why they did not do this more often; to be unassumingly caught up in one another in a way that negated all desire to be beautiful and palatable for a third party was both unfamiliar and terribly wonderful.

In the dream, Viktor Nikiforov spun him round, and Yuuri allowed himself to be led without an errant thought on the matter. There was no possibility in this world--in which it was somehow permissible for two of the most wanted men in the world to waltz in Yuuri’s old bedroom--that trusting Viktor Nikiforov would ever be anything but logical. Would ever be anything but _right_.

In the dream, Katsuki Yuuri tipped back his head, and he laughed.

There was no musical accompaniment, and thus Viktor Nikiforov set the style and the pace of the activity, and Yuuri gave himself up to him wholly. When Viktor stepped more quickly, Yuuri followed his changing footwork a bit clumsily. And yet, it was a pleasure to not be unerringly beautiful for him. Yuuri didn't know if he’d ever been so happy with the complete absence of poise as he was in this moment.

Viktor dipped him daringly enough that Yuuri glimpsed imaginary stars accompany the dizzy spinning to his head, and Yuuri allowed himself to close his eyes. He trusted him.

He trusted him. He _trusted_ him.

Viktor Nikiforov folded a hand against Yuuri’s cheek and his tone was endlessly, inexorably in love when he said, “You are so, so wonderful, Katsuki Yuuri.”

Yuuri hummed, and he was immensely pleased. “Yes,” he agreed sleepily. “I know.”

Viktor did not removed his hand from his face. The rhythm of his laughter imprinted itself against Yuuri’s cheek. Viktor sounded only mildly rueful when he said, “I wish I hadn't done that to you, Yura. Because now you have to hurt me, don't you?”

Drowsily, Yuuri frowned. “I don't...I don't think so, Vitya.”

A dreamy smile. Viktor Nikiforov looked like himself, but not like himself. There was something distant in his eyes, something older in the lines of his face. “I love you so much, Katsuki Yuuri. Please don't ever forget. I really--I did love you.”

Past tense. In the dream, Yuuri stiffened. Then, consciously, he relaxed. He was fine. He was _fine_. He was dancing with the love of his life in his childhood home, and the world outside was soft and snow-covered and he would never hurt Viktor Nikiforov, despite what he had told him.

Tucking his head into the hollow of his throat, Yuuri sighed. He closed his eyes. “M’tired, Vitya.”

Viktor brushed his lips to his hair and hummed something soothing. The method by which his fingers laid claim to the length of his spine, vertebra by vertebra, slowly enough to make Yuuri melt, was mesmerizing. “Because you're fighting a losing battle, darling. It’s a waste of energy.”

He had always had a talent for snatching Yuuri’s will from beneath him. Transfixed by the gentle way he touched his fingers to his throat, Yuuri forgot to be indignant at the words. He merely whispered, “Yes.”

“I told you,” Viktor murmured. “I told you it would be too much, didn’t I? I know you, Yuuri, and you are many things, but heartless is not one of them.”

“No,” Yuuri agreed dreamily. Try as he might to be, he wasn't heartless. Rather, at this very moment, Katsuki Yuuri was so full of the desire to love that there was room for nothing else.

His fingers curled against Viktor’s shoulder as they swayed. The waltz had ceased to be a waltz and was now more resembling of a slightly animated embrace. Yuuri was too sleepy to move. Viktor was preoccupied by other matters, like plotting gentle kisses down the slope of Yuuri’s nose. Yuuri said, “M’tired, Vitya.” And he was. He was so very tired.

“I know, Yuuri.” Viktor’s voice had a lilt to it which betrayed his smile. “Don’t trouble yourself with it any longer.” A brief pause while Yuuri leaned into him further and Viktor’s arm encircled his waist like an afterthought. They had always moved like it was second nature to touch each other, and Yuuri felt an inexplicable longing for this thing he had. As if, on some level, he suspected it would not last. “I’m sorry, Yuuri.”

And, incredibly, Katsuki Yuuri believed him.

Waking was unpleasant, but inevitable. Yuuri’s fingers knotted in the bedsheets, curled into the poodle’s fur unconsciously, and he mumbled with a tongue thick from a ruinous comedown, “I can't do it, Makka. I can’t.”

He would. He would. He _had_ to, not for his own sake because he was under no naive illusion that Fuchū would let him walk free after doing their dirty work for them. But he would not hurt his family by bestowing mercy on a man who did not deserve it. Not when his mother, his father, his sister had made it very clear that they wanted no part in this world Yuuri had constructed for himself, nor the benefits and consequences of such.

This was the only way.

Sympathetically, Makkachin licked at his hand, and the sunlight streaming in between the parted curtains washed the room in gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember abt 100k words ago when i said i hated writing flashback scenes? lmao. 
> 
> however, this chapter does mark the relative end of these plot-driven long flashback scenes. the next few chapters are going to be set mostly in the present, bc there are important things that are going to Be Happening. revenge-wise.
> 
> the info mentioned abt contact gunshot wounds is accurate. i looked at more than enough forensics murder photography to be sure of that. all the details on la sagrada familia is entirely from my own poor memory, though, so apologies if i didn't get the architecture right. 
> 
> im also in the process of starting a few other projects! one of them, a three part college ghost au, has already begun under this same pseudonym. other, longer plans, are still in the works. will keep updates posted on those.
> 
> as always, thanks for reading, kudos, and comments! xx


	14. Run Me Through

“Keep your eyes _up.”_

He heard the warning, but there was no time to react to it. Katsuki flipped him over and onto his ass professionally, and Yuri Plisetsky gasped.

_“Fuck.”_

“Watch your mouth.” Katsuki offered him a hand, and Yuri accepted it immediately. He had learned long ago that rejecting his assistance on grounds of wounded pride did not go over well with Katsuki Yuuri. “Take a break.”

Yuri lifted his chin. He’d grown a bit in the months since their very own prodigal son had returned, but he was still shorter than Katsuki Yuuri by fifteen centimeters. “I’m fine.”

“Fantastic. Didn’t ask.” Katsuki turned away boredly. “Take a break.”

It had been a month since the gala. Little had passed since, besides the reinstatement of Yuri Plisetsky’s lessons under Katsuki Yuuri’s tutelage. Yuri had forgotten what it was like to ache from hours in the practice room until now. He hadn't ventured outside his home except to come to the Nikiforov estate for Katsuki’s sessions in weeks.

Perpetual exhaustion aside, the totaled state of the Mitsu was to blame for this stagnation. Viktor had cut him off from his grandfather’s funds after witnessing the wreck of metal and expensive leather, and Yuri had yet to invent a way to regain access to the family inheritance that did not invoke the word _please_. Otabek was his chauffeur now, and nothing rankled within Yuri more than that.

Besides, perhaps, this.

“Yura!” He hadn't meant to sit beside Mila Babicheva. It was an accident. She flipped a butterfly knife over her knuckles as if she'd meant to impress him and intimidate him all at once. “How is the family’s newest traitor?”

“Fantastic,” Yuri replied coldly, and did not deign to look entirely at her. It was a skill he’s been practicing which he so admired in the mouths of Nikiforov and Katsuki. He wasn't sure he was quite successful at it yet; the anger came easily, the control did not. From the unhappy surprise on her face, it was at least marginally impactful. “How’s Crispino? Still asking her brother for permission to look in your direction?”

Mila’s smile was wickedly insincere. The knife between her hands flicked closed, then open again. “Thin fucking ice, brat.”

“So that's a yes,” Yuri mused. He had to admit, taking a page from Katsuki’s book was fun. People were so satisfyingly afraid when one was sharp. “You know, I'm confused as to why I'm the traitor now. Given the ways you spend your freetime.”

Mila looked at him scathingly. Her mouth twisted. “That's business.”

“Doesn't sound like business to me.” Yuri Plisetsky looked at his trembling hands. He did not like the Crispino family, for notable reasons. Discussing them always make him shake. “Sounds like emotional compromise.”

Babicheva stood in one fluent motion. Her expression was furious.

“Well, you and yours would know all about _that,_ wouldn't you?” she snarled. The look she gave him next was one of utter disdain. “God, you're becoming just like him. Feltsman doesn't know how to raise anything but the darling spoiled prince, does he?”

The comparisons to Viktor came so often now that Yuri was under Katsuki's instruction. Each one slithered down his spine like a parasite. “Shut _up--”_

“Watch your mouth and your back around Vitya, kid.” Mila shook her curls imperiously. “He’s faithless, and it's to his advantage that no one ever wants to believe it. You don't want to follow Nikolai’s lead when you get too difficult for him to handle, do you?”

“You--” Fury made him stand. Confusion made him stop. “What?”

Mila Babicheva smiled. The butterfly knife flipped thrice between her hands and then disappeared into her sleeve. She held a finger to her lips in an entreaty for complicit silence. Across the room, Katsuki now had his phone to his ear and his back to the two of them.

Yuri hissed, “Mila--”

“Mm.” Mila Babicheva tilted her head sweetly. “I’m not losing my pretty head over this secret, Yura. You're smart enough to draw your own conclusions, aren’t you?”

He was. Yuri Plisetsky’s fingers curled into a fist. Half moons carved themselves into the heel of his palm. Lessons with Katsuki revisited him suddenly, and Yuri recognized the adult calm of true rage. This was what Viktor felt, this was what Yuuri felt. This was the rage that leveled cities and toppled empires and led scorned, weaker men to kill their lovers. This was what Plisetskys felt.

And Yuri found it suited him.

* * *

 

Katsuki Yuuri had let the family heir off early. Their usual exercises in meditation had proved useless. Something vibrated beneath Yuuri’s skin too hotly for calm. Plisetsky appeared to be feeling similarly, based on the restless pulse in his throat, and so Yuuri had sent him home. Otabek Altin had collected him at the door.

He had resolved to spend the evening doing very little. But Viktor had invited him to supper on Petrograd side, an invitation which required fine clothing and a finer attitude Yuuri was less than thrilled to produce.

Public appearances were no longer amusing--rather, they had ceased to be so after Yuuri turned twenty-three. Dining on Petrograd side was as much a performance as any trip to the ballet was now that Katsuki Yuuri’s name was once again on the lips of every Petersburg resident.

His hair was still damp from a shower and his clothes less than suitable for a night out when he knocked on Viktor Nikiforov’s door and received no answer. But Yuuri had hardly expected--nor hoped for--his presence. He knew Viktor was out of town until their scheduled dinner plans, on some mundane drug business in Pushkin which Yuuri had not bothered himself to supervise. Generously, Yuuri had left that unassuming piece of the kingdom to Viktor during his early coup.

At the threshold of Viktor Nikiforov’s bedroom, Katsuki Yuuri tried the handle and found the door unlocked.

_Oh, Viktor._ He was so forgetful. It had been endearing, once.

There was a reason for this trespass, which extended past simply flouting Viktor’s want for privacy in a petty response to Viktor’s disregard for Yuuri’s own. There were things Yuuri needed to know about Viktor, if he hoped to pull off this dangerous new con. He needed to know how far he could go to win his trust, and what ventures would tip him over the edge and get himself killed.

Katsuki Yuuri closed the door behind him, and then he strode to Viktor’s desk and yanked open the drawers. Viktor had never been terribly organized--his best business was conducted in fits of mania that had won him his reputation for best gambling boss in the underground--but he was hardly a disaster of a businessman either. The first drawer was a careful curation of manila folders. The second was more exciting--papered with a few careworn white envelopes.

He felt something that was not quite tenderness, nor malice, flicker across his face. An infinitesimal flaw in expression, but its existence was indisputable. Katsuki Yuuri was lucky there had been no one to witness it.

During his time at the Nikiforov estate, Yuuri had taken several annual sabbaticals in Tokyo. Always at Minako’s behest, and never optional, these weeks apart had prompted an exercise in Viktor Nikiforov one could only describe as fatally _soft_.

He would write letters, but he’d never send them. When Yuuri returned home, sometimes Viktor would allow him to read them. Sometimes he would not. Sometimes, he told him once, when Yuuri was twenty-four, he burned them before Yuuri even came back to Russia.

_I tell you everything, Yuuri,_ he said once, twice, too often to be the truth. _There is nothing on that paper I could not show you in better ways than this._ And then he would do something wonderful with his mouth on the inside of Yuuri’s thighs, and Katsuki Yuuri would believe him. Or rather, he would forget that he did not.

A year later, while rotting in solitary confinement in Fuchū, Yuuri had finally come to terms with what these letters must have been. _Confessions_.

He looked now for said confessions, looked now for any letters dated after Yuuri’s twenty-third birthday. That was when the correspondence with the Crispinos had begun, he knew now. That was when Viktor Nikiforov ought to have begun to feel guilt.

Something overcame him then, and Katsuki Yuuri snatched a fistful of envelopes from the drawer. Cast them onto the desk’s surface and tore the topmost one open furiously.

Russian cursive tended to give him a headache. Viktor’s handwriting was worse than most would expect of the world’s most elegant crime lord, but Yuuri had spent years reading it, devouring it, tucking the script into his jacket so the scrawl pressed flat against his heart. He knew Viktor Nikiforov’s handwriting like his own.

This letter was dated five years prior. Yuuri didn't care about five years prior. He cast it aside.

The next one was from two years ago. Yuuri scanned this one with a bit more interest--it was still addressed to him, but Viktor had used his full name and title rather than the diminutives he so favored when they had shared a bed.

_I confess, Katsuki Yuuri, I didn't know by what method they would kill you. I never thought I’d have to be familiar with the minutiae of Japanese capital punishment in my life. But hanging seems outdated, doesn't it?_

_I hope it's quick. I’m sorry._

Yuuri tossed this one back on the desk. Selected another, from the month after the former letter.

_You understand better than I do that empires are difficult. I realize now that I can't do this by myself. You made a much better prince. I’m sorry._

Another, the majority of the text furiously censored in thick black ink:

_Katsuki Yuuri--_

_I don't know what it was I meant to do._

Yuuri felt his hands begin to shake. This latest letter fluttered in time with the tremors of his hands, and he let it drop to the desk’s surface when the effort of holding it became too much. Too overwhelming.

He sat at the desk, his gaze held by something far away. He ran his thumb over the edge of the envelope again and again, until the paper sliced open his fingertip and his blood seeped into the wood grain of Viktor Nikiforov’s desk.

Then, new blood curling the paper’s edges in his hands, Yuuri withdrew his phone from his pocket and called Nishigori Yuko.

* * *

 

“Do you remember,” Viktor began quietly, his grip tightening on the shift, hesitant to look in Katsuki Yuuri’s direction. “Do you remember when I visited you in Tokyo? The first time?”

Yuuri had been eerily silent the entirety of the drive. Viktor risked a glance to his right and glimpsed Katsuki Yuuri in stark profile, unreadable gaze centered on the dash.

Softly, Yuuri said, “I remember.”

Something like relief flooded him. Viktor measured his breathing in a futile effort to control his erratic heartbeat.

“It was snowing.”

“Yes.” Yuuri said it simply, but there was weight in the word. Viktor did not dare look at him again. “It doesn't snow very often. In Tokyo.”

“You told me that, then.” Viktor blinked. “I liked the city then. I’d like to go back, I think. One day.”

“You would.” It was hardly a question. Yuuri’s tone was flat. “But Tokyo is a dangerous city for you now, Viktor.”

“No more dangerous than Petersburg is for you.” He didn't mean for it to sound defensive, but it did. In his peripheral, he saw Yuuri look to him sharply.

“Maybe,” Yuuri said softly. “But Tokyo would devour you. You know nothing about the city. You can't even speak the language.”

Viktor Nikiforov grimaced. Starting over was proving more difficult than he had imagined. “You were always there to speak it for me.”

“Until I wasn't.”

“Yes.” Viktor acknowledged this carefully. “Until you weren’t.”

It was not the correct moment for an apology. Viktor knew it, as much as he knew that Yuuri was testing his knowledge of such. An attempt at asking for forgiveness now would be construed as insincere, and such a misstep would surely be disastrous.

Silence drew agonizingly between them. Fingers curled on the steering wheel, and Viktor felt Yuuri’s eyes come to rest on his face with peculiar acuteness. Yet he did not look at him, instead letting Yuuri study his profile for as long as he desired without interruption. The concession felt raw, and dangerous.

He knew, as he had known that an apology would kill him, that this was necessary. For trust. For starting over.

And he wanted to start over, didn't he? It had been so _long._

He was tired of this. He wanted a clean slate. If that meant baring his soul to Katsuki Yuuri, allowing him to see Viktor without armor, if that meant delivering his empire to Katsuki Yuuri without negotiations, then so be it. Viktor didn't care very much for Saint Petersburg nowadays anyway.

Silence had become unbearable. Viktor Nikiforov said, “Yuuri--”

And, like that, Yuuri’s gaze fled him. There was pinkness to his cheeks, which he sought to distract from with a flippant wave of his hand.

“I realize now, Viktor,” he said, and even as his gestures begged carelessness his tone was quietly reverent, “our problems always began with an obsession of beautiful things.”

It was an unexpected confession. Totally worthless, as far as posturing went, and it sought to reveal to Viktor something Yuuri had spent his months in Russia trying furiously to stamp out: attraction to Viktor Nikiforov. Whether an admittance of something solely physical or not, the statement was an admittance of weakness.

Viktor blinked. Carefully, he said, “You were always very beautiful.”

“I know.” Viktor risked another glimpse of his face and found a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I was not asking for reassurance of the fact, _anata.”_

Of course not. Of course he was not seeking for Viktor to call him beautiful. Katsuki Yuuri knew what he was. The lazy slide of his gaze, the comfortable movement of his hand to brush the hair from his face, the very way he carried himself now and always; it was painfully apparent that Katsuki Yuuri knew he was beautiful.

And almost divinely so. It hurt Viktor to look at him.

_Anata._

Katsuki Yuuri watched his fingers twitch on the shift with cool interest. Viktor was driving too fast for legality now. A bad habit, undeniably. But not atypical.

Stiltedly, because it was suddenly taking an obscene amount of effort not to slam on the Camaro’s brakes and demand Yuuri tell him exactly what he wanted because god this torment was too much and Viktor couldn't handle _not knowing_ anymore--stiltedly, Viktor Nikiforov said: “Don’t be perverse.”

Yuuri moved too quickly for Viktor to follow the trajectory of his hands, and he flinched violently before he realized that Yuuri was not touching him. Had no intentions of touching him.

Instead, his grip was firm on the steering wheel as he yanked the vehicle back into the correct lane. Viktor had lost focus on the road, had forgotten he was supposed to be driving and not debating the worth of telling Yuuri he was sorry again against the value of his tongue if Katsuki decided to deprive him of it as recompense. The Camaro had begun to veer violently into oncoming Saint Petersburg traffic, and Viktor hadn’t even taken note.

Serenely, Yuuri said, “Is it something cultural, or evolutionary, that none of you can drive to save your own lives?”

“I--” His heart sat on his tongue. Speaking was impossible. Viktor merely shook his head. Yuuri’s gaze lingered on him for a moment longer before he loosened his fingers from the wheel and settled back into his own seat. Katsuki Yuuri inspected his own fingernails with a certain air of contempt.

Square one. Again.

Viktor implored desperately, “Why--”

“You missed your turn,” Yuuri interrupted with an air of boredom. “At the Voykova house.”

And he had. Viktor swore between his teeth and yanked the Camaro into the next lane. Yuuri’s fingers splayed against the headliner above them to brace himself against the sudden movement. He closed his eyes, as if Viktor’s short temper was tiring to him.

“The situation is not so dire,” Yuuri drawled, “that it necessitates giving me whiplash.”

Jaw clenched. He could not feel his fingers against the wheel. Car horns wailed in protest of his sudden lane change, and Viktor felt heat creeping up his throat. Yuuri was doing this on purpose. “Please. Stop talking.”

An impetuous tilt to his chin, but Yuuri did not venture to speak again until Viktor had corrected his mistake. Silence was heavier than the dwindling rage in his chest.

The keys to the Camaro were pressed into a valet’s hands along with a few thousand rubles. Yuuri slammed the passenger side door with more force than Viktor thought necessary and delivered a cold glance to the man now holding Viktor’s keys.

“Fifteen thousand more to have it right here in an hour and a half. Another fifteen for your discretion.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man averted his gaze, and Viktor felt a twinge of sympathy. He clearly did not get paid enough to cut deals with their kind. “Thank you, sir.”

Viktor closed his eyes and waved the valet away. Yuuri met him at the curb and wound his way to Viktor’s right side. His public persona, the one in which he had spent the drive to Petrograd side dressing himself, was on full display here. He was positively predatory, and all the more lovely for it.

Still. “Scaring the staff isn’t necessary,” Viktor reminded him in a murmur. “They all remember who you are.”

“Mm.” His fingers ghosted along the inner flesh of Viktor’s wrist, and he seemed to smile at the tense set to Viktor’s jaw. “But do they remember you?”

“I thought we had agreed we were done with this, Yura.” Viktor was past terror, past anxiety. He was older now than he had been and Yuuri--at least, this incarnation of him--was nothing but exhausting. “We were--” It felt childish to say it. Yuuri did it for him.

“Starting over. Of course.” Yuuri was not touching him any longer--perhaps because he himself could not bear it--but Viktor still felt his touch lingering at his palm. “On my terms.”

For the sake of a conversation which was not maudlin nor actively promissory of violence, if not for anything else, Viktor indulged him. “Remind me of those again?”

Yuuri laughed. Viktor had loved this diamond-cut version of him once. Now he could not remember why. It was so obviously a disguise.

Softly, his eyes scanning everywhere but Viktor’s face, Yuuri told only him, “You’ll remember.”

* * *

 

Katsuki Yuuri ate little, and he drank much more. By the time he was back in the passenger seat of Viktor’s Camaro, he was undeniably tipsy. Attempting to hide this new development from Viktor Nikiforov was proving difficult.

It was not entirely his own fault. Public appearances were exhausting. Truthfully, they had always been exhausting, but posturing required shouldering a new weight now. Every smirk and delicately veiled threat was heavy nowadays, and Yuuri found himself wondering throughout dinner why they could not simply have dined in the estate. Why Viktor insisted on parading him around like the newly won spoils of war. As if _he_ possessed any semblance of ownership over Katsuki Yuuri.

Additionally, the waitstaff had been rightfully terrified of the both of them, and had wasted away the evening in attempts at plying Katsuki Yuuri’s favor with wine. It had reaped disappointing results on their behalf, he figured. The alcohol had only made him sleepy and sullen. Any potential romances with benevolence had dissipated with his clarity of mind, and he stopped trying for polite removal after the fourth glass of merlot. At one point in the evening, Viktor had entreated him to stop cutting his eyes so sharply at their server; Yuuri had not even realized he was being anything but perfectly cordial, and by then could hardly bring himself to care.

“The second time you came to Tokyo,” Yuuri had said then, softly, testing the sharpness of the table settings’ knife on his fingertip. “Minako had asked me to kill you, before that.”

Viktor Nikiforov had looked at him like this revelation was no surprise. “Asked?”

“Ordered.” Yuuri frowned. Candor was always less than flattering. “And punished me, for failing to follow those orders.”

“I remember that.” Viktor’s fingers had trailed the edge of the porcelain dish before him. His voice matched Yuuri’s in softness. “Bruised ribs.”

“I--yes.” _Bruised ribs._ They had hurt, once the spirits and the drugs Yuko had fed him had worn off. They had hurt a lot, and the humiliation had been worse. Viktor had traced the surface bruises with cool, soothing hands.

“Why didn't you?”

“I’m sorry?” Yuuri pressed the edge of the knife too deeply into his fingertip and broke the skin.

Viktor Nikiforov’s tone was achingly polite. “Why didn't you follow orders?”

Yuuri narrowed his eyes, but Viktor did not cave, nor did he withdraw the inquiry. Softly, Yuuri said, “Do I look like the following type?”

Viktor appeared to consider him. His brow furrowed in gentle worry. “I don't--”

“At that time, _anata,_ I was not under the impression that you deserved to die. I do not carry out causes in which I do not believe. Does that answer your question?”

Averted eyes. Yuuri’s fingers twitched death spasms against the cutlery. Viktor Nikiforov said, “It answers my question.”

“Good.” Yuuri closed his eyes for too long, tipped his head back to the light above the table. He was content to finish this mess of a public appearance in silence, if Viktor would allow him.

“Why do you still call me that?”

Katsuki Yuuri opened his eyes. The distress that flashed across his face was involuntary emotion, too quick to smother. He hoped Viktor did not recognize it for what it was. “I don't know,” he murmured. He pressed his fingers beneath his eyes in an attempt to prod himself into alertness. “Force of habit, maybe.”

_Damn him._ Viktor’s expression was gently imploring. Yuuri felt compelled to explain himself, but could not find the words. Instead he elected for: “Would you rather I called you something less kind?”

“That word is not kind.” He would not break gazes with Yuuri. The heat in Yuuri’s chest was unbearable. He snatched up his merlot and drained it without taking his eyes off Viktor Nikiforov. “Please don't call me by it, Yura.”

Yuuri slid Viktor’s own glass of wine across the table and drank this one in full too. “Then don't call me _that,”_ he said sharply. “Please.”

“Okay.” Viktor’s hands fluttered to his throat. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

Yuuri regarded him with heavy-lidded eyes. He didn't like this tipsy drowsiness. It made him less careful. It softened his perception of his surroundings, and cast Viktor in a much too sympathetic light. Yuuri said quietly, “Force of habit.”

Viktor Nikiforov blinked at him, and Yuuri could not bring himself to find the remorse in his expression vile. Only pitiable.

In Viktor’s car, he found himself dangerously near falling asleep. He watched the city pass in various colored lights until he became bored of it, and then he turned his face to study Viktor Nikiforov’s silhouette. The slightest shift in the set to his mouth betrayed the fact that Viktor had taken notice.

“The third time she gave me those orders, I had just bought the rings.”

“I’m sorry?” Viktor’s expression, silhouetted dark against the bright cityscape, twisted. He made as if to look at Katsuki Yuuri, then apparently thought better of it and kept his eyes on the road.

Yuuri registered the heaviness of his own voice, the thickness of his accent, but couldn't summon the energy to correct it. Perhaps, he thought, it made him seem more earnest. Perhaps that was not necessarily a terrible thing.

“Minako. She...she wanted me to kill you. I told her that I had just bought a set of wedding rings.”

“And what did she say to that?”

Yuuri pressed his fingers to his own throat and relayed to Viktor the Japanese equivalent of the phrase _go fuck yourself._

“I assume that wasn't a promise that she was understanding of the situation,” Viktor said. Yuuri choked out a half-miserable laugh.

“She also threatened to make my inheritance of the Okukawa business contingent on your assassination. So, no.” Yuuri smiled humorlessly. “She was not understanding.”

“I’m sorry,” Viktor said. Yuuri narrowed his eyes.

“I don't care whether you’re sorry or not.” In his haste to not care, he bit his tongue and tasted copper. “This is...this is my starting over. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Yes.” Viktor’s tone made clear his doubts on the subject. But mercifully, he did not look at Yuuri, and he did not challenge the statement. “I understand.”

Yuuri’s eyes drifted closed. The next confession came involuntarily. “I should have followed those orders.”

“You believe that?”

Tipsy as he was, it was easy for Yuuri to ignore him. He continued, “You clearly had no problem following yours.”

“I…” Somewhere else, on a different plane of consciousness, Viktor Nikiforov sounded distressed. “I don't know how to answer that, Yuuri.”

“Honestly.” He was an unbearable masochist. Nothing he confessed here would benefit him in the next few months. Yuuri was doing this solely to feel the pain of it. “If you can.”

“I can.” He had no right to indignance. Viktor had proven time and time again that being honest with Yuuri was low on his list of priorities. But still, he sighed. Then he said, “I did not find it easy.”

“Mm.” Yuuri smiled thinly. “Honestly.”

“That’s true,” Viktor said, and there was an edge of anger to his voice. “What would it take to prove that to you?”

“You couldn't afford it.” Yuuri’s jaw was clenched, though he could not remember making the decision to do so. He thought his teeth might splinter from the force of it. “You couldn't--”

“Tell me.” Viktor’s tone was cold. His knuckles were white. Yuuri suddenly felt afraid. “Please. Just tell me what it would cost.”

“Are you proposing to buy my forgiveness, Viktor Nikiforov?” Two could play at this game. Yuuri let all falsely playful warmth leach from his voice. This was honesty. This was what he was, beneath the prettiness. “It will not end well.”

Viktor Nikiforov said, “You know that's not what I mean.”

Sharply, Yuuri looked him in his face. Such was not a conversation to have now, with Viktor driving. His short attention span was dangerous enough in a moving vehicle without added distractions.

Yuuri said, “Pull the car over,” and immediately, Viktor did.

Yuuri did not look him entirely in the eye, for fear of divulging secrets he wished to keep. Instead, he squared his jaw and ignored the flighty cadence of his heartbeat in his throat and drew on every single reserve of courage he possessed. “Tell me everything,” he whispered, eyes focused somewhere more bearable above Viktor’s head. “Prove it wasn't easy.”

And immediately, Viktor did.

“I watched your trial,” he said quietly. “Over and over again, until it couldn't make me sick anymore. I could quote it word for word, to prove it to you.”

Silently, Yuuri blinked at him. Viktor had begun to tremble finely, and he pinned his hands to his lab in a fruitless attempt to prevent Yuuri from witnessing the way he shook.

Yuuri thought it all a wonderfully executed lie. He was nearly already lost in it.

He gestured silently for Viktor to continue.

“Yakov came to me after you bought the rings,” Viktor continued, voice reverent. “That’s when it started.”

“When what started?” His own voice was dreamy in affectation. Yuuri hated himself for indulging this, and for inviting it upon himself. He didn't care what Viktor Nikiforov had to say, he thought firmly. He simply wanted someone else to be penitent for once; Yuuri himself wanted the power to deny absolution.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Doubt.”

Yuuri echoed softly, “Doubt.”

“You were an Okukawa. Everyone had been worried for years that you were going to--to--I don't know.” Viktor shook his head. “You were an Okukawa, and evidently everyone had noticed but me.”

“You noticed,” Yuuri prompted, entirely of some other being’s volition. This was awful. “After the rings.”

“Yes,” Viktor whispered. His gaze was hungry. Yuuri drowned in it. “I am not making excuses, Yuuri. I’d never had something like _that,_ never thought I would. It's not in the nature of this occupation nor the nature of being Russian to...allow something like that to go as long as it did.” Hungry eyes became unbearable to look at, and Yuuri was forced to avert his own gaze for a moment. “And so when I started to wonder if it was--I don't know, a trick, I suppose--it made much more sense. In my head.”

“Yes.” Yuuri closed his eyes.

“No one on this side planned the Crispino involvement. They came to us, after Yuri went missing.” A pause. Viktor’s voice became even softer. “You have to understand, Yuuri. I would not have invented something that cruel on my own. That’s not how I was raised.”

And this, perhaps, was the biggest lie of them all. Yuuri could not smother his disbelieving laugh. Beside him, he thought he felt Viktor flinch.

“It’s not,” he insisted quietly. “You know...you know who I am. I was raised to handle my quarrels myself, Yuuri.”

Yuuri tipped up his chin. His eyes stayed carefully closed. “Tell me how you would have done it.”

“I'm sorry?”

Now he opened his eyes. Viktor was looking at him in sick incredulity. “Tell me how you would have done it. Given your way.”

“I--” He swayed. Yuuri felt something sharp and unforgiving claw its way up his own throat. “It would have been private. That's how…that's how killing Nikolai was.”

“You would have killed me like Nikolai?” Yuuri had not been a member of the family then, to remember Nikolai Plisetsky’s assassination. But he remembered the way Viktor had spoken of it. He did not care for the likening.

_“No.”_ The force behind the word made Yuuri flinch. Viktor shook his head insistently. “No.”

Softly: “Then how?”

“In bed.” The implication made Yuuri recoil. Viktor purposefully paid it no mind. “The Plisetsky house never liked poison. I’m not sure if I would ever use it. Maybe a knife.”

“You are clearly fond of any scenario which ends in me bleeding out in your arms,” Yuuri said primly. Something unknown and terrifying vibrated under his skin.

Viktor Nikiforov blinked at him. “It’s intimate,” he said honestly, and his voice was flat. “There’s power in it.”

“Of course.” Now Yuuri was trembling too. “I’m still not convinced this was difficult for you, Vitya. It sounds to me as if it was only easier than I’d thought.”

Sharp shake of his head. The movement was nearly violent, and it put the taste of fear in Yuuri’s mouth. “Do you remember,” Viktor was nearly begging him, suddenly. “Do you remember that night when Chris saved your life?”

Carefully, because admitting so would cost him, Yuuri said, “Pieces of it.”

“I was…” Viktor closed his eyes, and his expression was pained. Yuuri was suddenly possessed by the irrational desire to reach upward and smooth out the lines in his face. “I was so afraid, that night.”

Softly, Yuuri shook his head. His fingers twitched, as if he was really about to touch him. What an awful, awful addiction the two of them shared. “What does that matter?” he asked scathingly.

“I think about it so often, it must matter.” Viktor nodded resolutely. His eyes were on Yuuri’s face, but his gaze was ostensibly somewhere else. “It matters.”

Yuuri regarded him in the darkness, and strangely could not help himself from saying, “I’m going to kiss you now.”

“You shouldn’t.” They were too close, physically. Yuuri was half inclined to bridge the gap entirely by himself. “You don't really want to.”

“I do.”

Viktor smiled, and it was soft. “That’s a poor coping mechanism.”

“You shouldn't be driving. You’ve drunk too much.”

“So have you.” Still, he didn't withdraw himself. He stayed where he was, and Yuuri looked at him like he was experiencing a particularly heartbreaking work of art. “You don't want this.”

_“Anata,”_ Yuuri said, and he saw the way the singular word made Viktor’s lips part. “I really do.”

And he kissed him.

Something like a gasp caught itself in Viktor’s throat, and Yuuri felt him grow still under his hands. The icy reception almost made him withdraw, almost forced him to reflect on his actions here, to consider the repercussions he would have to face when the dizzying buzz wore off and Yuuri remembered how he hated him.

But then Viktor relented, then he became almost instantly malleable between Yuuri’s hands, and Yuuri remembered how _nice_ it was to kiss Viktor Nikiforov when he had nothing to prove. To kiss him simply because he wanted to, because it felt good and kept them warm and softened entire realities around them. And truly, it _was_ good and warm and soft, even though it should not have been.

Yuuri’s hands were shaking. Viktor caught his right hand by the wrist and pressed it firmly against his own chest, and Yuuri considered if this was an invitation to undress him or not. Likely not. They were not teenagers, and fucking in Viktor’s classic sports car on the shoulder of a Petrograd street would be beneath them. Probably.

And so Yuuri remained carefully, purposefully ignorant of how entranced he was by this--by the gentle way Viktor’s hands explored his chest and his back as if hesitant to touch him, the quiet wanting evident in every curve of his body, the hypnotic way he had begun to trace Yuuri’s jawline over and over and over again with his mouth. There was no acknowledgement of how damned Yuuri was, no revelation that he was terribly, irrevocably lost, because there was no conscious thought available on the subject. It was more of a feeling--lost lost lost and found again--and Yuuri perhaps thought it lovely.

He did not recognize his own voice in the wordless entreaties to stay as Viktor took his mouth from the angle of his jaw. His eyes were closed. His cheeks were flushed and warm.

“I miss you,” Viktor whispered, cupping Yuuri’s face in his hands. Yuuri felt as if he would never be capable of forming a coherent thought again. “I loved you. I think I miss loving you.”

“Mm,” Yuuri contributed sleepily, and he felt his mouth curve. He was more drunk than before. Everything was soft and wonderful and he couldn't remember whether he was twenty-three or twenty-seven. “Starting over.”

“You would call this starting over?”

“I would call this…” He wracked his mind for something reasonable and non-incriminating to say aloud. Thought was difficult, and spoken word even more so. “Kissing you.”

“Eloquent.” Viktor’s tone was gently amused.

“You may have noticed,” Yuuri said, “I’ve had too much to drink.” Eloquence was a necessary sacrifice to make in the name of communication. Communication seemed compulsively necessary at the moment.

Viktor withdrew his hands suddenly from his face, and Yuuri found this immensely regrettable. He made a vague noise of protest and leaned involuntarily in the direction in which Viktor had retreated.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor said quickly, and he stumbled over the words. He placed a steadying hand against Yuuri’s shoulder. “You're drunk. This is--this isn't good of me.”

“I’m not--”

“You obviously didn't mean for...” Viktor faltered. “I’m sorry.”

Yuuri sat back. His head was spinning. Everything felt delightfully inconsequential and horribly disastrous all at once. He had kissed Viktor Nikiforov, and there had been no cruel intent behind it. Yuuri had done so because he wanted to, and that was all.

He didn't know what this meant.

Calmly, he asked, “Did you mean it?”

“Did I…” Viktor looked pained. He looked at his hands for an undefined length of time, and then he looked at Yuuri. He provided no answer.

Yuuri pressed his fingers to his throat in an effort to hide their trembling. He had made a grave mistake here. Yuko would be incredibly disappointed.

“How would you have done it?”

The question took Katsuki Yuuri by surprise. He shook his head to show that he did not understand.

“How would you have killed me?” Pleading expression. Viktor Nikiforov added, seemingly compulsively, “Katsuki Yuuri.”

And Yuuri laughed. It was a desperate sort of thing, and there was nothing at all amusing about the matter. But there was little else to be done but laugh when he felt this near to tears.

“You really want to know?” he whispered, and he smiled humorously when Viktor nodded. “Just the basics, or do you want it in all its excruciating detail?”

“You've considered the details,” Viktor said, as if it was an answer.

“I thought about it every day for three years,” Yuuri replied. “I've considered all the details.”

Viktor Nikiforov set his eyes on him in quiet seriousness. He appeared to be weighing the cost of his words. “Just the basics, please.”

Katsuki Yuuri nodded. Then he said, “I’d do it in your bed too.”

He thought he glimpsed Viktor close his eyes. He leaned back in his seat like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Yes.”

“You were correct when you said there was power in it, my dear.” Yuuri turned his face to the window and surveyed the few stars there were to be seen over Saint Petersburg. “I’d thought early on that I would make it public. Make Plisetsky and Giacometti and Feltsman watch, maybe have them to play supporting roles in the act.” A star moved too resolutely across the sky, and it took Yuuri several moments to discern it was not a star at all. “But I kept coming back to your bed.”

He said, “Have you ever been stabbed, Viktor Nikiforov?”

“No.” There was honesty in it.

“Of course not.” Yuuri smiled. “It’s interesting, I think, how we came to be so close. We are so fundamentally different.”

“I don’t think--” From his peripheral, Yuuri saw Viktor’s gaze swing to him sharply. “I do not think we are that different.”

“That was not an invitation for argument.” Curtly, Viktor nodded. Yuuri continued, “You were born into this business. I was not. I feel this grants me a sort of outsider’s clarity of mind, as well certain firsthand experiences you lack.” He paused, collected himself. _Drunk_. Maybe he was. “I learned how to use knives after I was stabbed in Seoul. I decided in Tokyo that was what I would use when I killed you.”

“Hypothetically, of course,” he added with a small smile. Beside him, Viktor inclined his head stiltedly.

“Of course,” he echoed. Yuuri turned suddenly from the window to look him in the face.

“I’d make it last.” Without his conscious decision to do so, Yuuri’s voice had dropped to just above a whisper. “Make you hurt. Make you beg, soak the sheets in blood--” Something loud caught his attention to his right. Dimly, Yuuri realized it was his own doing; he had driven his fist against the side of the passenger seat door in wicked anger.

Strange, since he didn't think he felt angry. He didn't feel the gentle trembling of his mouth either.

He said, “I’d end it on the third day.” Katsuki Yuuri swallowed thickly; his throat was dangerously near closing up in panic. “Three days for three years--it's not a very fair trade, is it?”

“No.” Viktor Nikiforov’s voice was a whisper. “No, that's not--not fair at all.”

“You deserve worse.”

“Yes.”

Yuuri smiled softly. He thought he might be close to weeping, but he couldn't quite tell. He didn't quite mind either. “Somehow, I could never bring myself to imagine how much worse.”

Silence stretched between them. Then, finally:

“Would you like me to apologize?” Viktor asked quietly.

“Would you like me to remove your eyes?” Yuuri snapped back, too viciously. There was the anger. He welcomed it, because it made him feel safe.

Viktor had been about to touch him. At Yuuri’s last outburst, he had snatched his hand back to his chest. Yuuri watched the curl of his fingers against his collar and imagined them in his mouth.

He closed his fist and placed it firmly against the passenger side window. Said with careful control, despite the thickness of his tongue, “Take me home.”

And Viktor Nikiforov did.

* * *

 

“You could do it now.”

Katsuki Yuuri was at the window. Phichit Chulanont watched him carefully, but curiously without any great apprehension. He had stopped being afraid of him some time ago.

Katsuki followed the downward path of a raindrop on the window pane with his fingertip. “What?”

“You could turn him in now.”

“I have eight months left,” Katsuki murmured. He didn't look at Phichit. “There’s time.”

There was still time. But Phichit had begun to worry abt Katsuki Yuuri’s conviction to the cause. He had begun to worry too about how Katsuki’s flouting of Tokyo orders would start to reflect on Phichit.

“There’s time,” Phichit repeated, a bit doubtfully. “I know. But the longer you wait, the more dangerous discovery becomes.”

“I know that.” Yuuri laid his cheek against the glass. “I know.”

“What are you waiting for, exactly?” He hadn't meant it to sound as sharp as it had. Katsuki Yuuri’s fingers twitched against the fogged windowpane, but he did not reprimand Phichit for his directness. He only shrugged.

“Couldn't say.” He closed his eyes. “I'd like to live out the few months I’ve got left without rushing them, I suppose.”

“That's not--” Phichit sighed. A new pressure between his eyes made him frown. Lying to one who insisted on laying bare the unpleasant truth was so exhausting. “You know that isn’t what you were promised.”

Yuuri smiled softly. “What has been been promised and what is due to me are two very different things, Mister Chulanont. You know that.”

“I know what I was told, and that includes letting you walk free in exchange for Viktor Nikiforov’s arrest.” Phichit sat on his own bed. He’s grown to like this little flat, over the past months. But he didn't want to die here. “Everything else is speculation on your part.”

“Of course.” Yuuri indulged him. Perhaps he took pity on Phichit’s own refusal to admit he would not walk free of this endeavor either. “Of course.”

Silence. Phichit blinked, and then he nodded. Once.

After a moment, Yuuri said, “I’d like an update on my family. Is that possible?”

“What kind of update? I can't contact them in your name--”

“I don't ask for that.” Yuuri shook his head, then softened his voice. Often, Phichit had trouble reconciling the Katsuki Yuuri that frequented his flat with the one he thought he had known four months ago, or with the one he thought he had feared in the media. Incredible how there could be so many faces to one man. “I’d just like to know--how they are. Habits, news, anything. I know Fuchū is watching them. I simply--I want to know.”

Phichit remembered suddenly that Katsuki Yuuri was going to die in Russia without contacting his family again. He wondered how much Yuuri hated him for that.

“Yes.” Phichit nodded again, a tad more enthusiastically now. “I can do that for you.”

“Thank you,” Katsuki Yuuri whispered, and Phichit remembered him confiding in whispers to him what he had done with Nikiforov on Petrograd side. _Emotional compromise_ were scary words when their employment against Katsuki Yuuri might directly result in the removal of Phichit Chulanont’s head. “Thank you.”

“Yeah.” God, he needed a drink. He needed a one-way plane ticket out of Russia and several years spent on sabbatical in Thailand. Actually, he needed to quit his job. “No problem.”

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov watched Katsuki Yuuri across the table, and he could not discern what he was feeling. Anger, perhaps. He thought this the only logical name for it.

Yuuri, for his part, seemed to be enjoying himself. There was a wicked smile on his lips as he watched Beskudnikov speak. He balanced his chin in his hand and traced the wood grain in the table with a fingertip.

Viktor couldn't imagine such a smile boding well. Beskudnikov was lamenting the impact of his unofficial business on his official Kremlin income--suggesting rather obtusely, Viktor thought, a raise. It was a stupid move. Perhaps he thought Viktor had grown kinder. Perhaps he meant it solely as a ploy to irritate Katsuki.

Viktor thought he should have known better.

“I suggest we return to discussing business,” Yuuri said, quite placidly. “I’m too busy a man to waste time with government fat cats for altruistic reasons, Grigori.”

Beskudnikov, to his credit, appeared unruffled. He smiled. “Of course.” His gaze flickered briefly to the reports before him, then back to meet Yuuri’s eyes. Bold of him; Yuuri’s gaze was not easy to match when he was like this. “I simply thought, given the recent turn of events, that it would be in one’s best interest to keep me loyal. It’s a suggestion entirely for your benefit, Mister Katsuki.”

Viktor knew nothing of any recent turn of events. By the delicate arch of Yuuri’s eyebrows, it appeared he did, and thought it inconsequential.

“Forgive me, it’s not my business nor best interest to keep Kremlin traitors loyal.” Yuuri lifted his head languidly from his hand and leaned back into his chair. “My preference on such matters is common knowledge by now, isn't it?”

At this, Viktor scowled. Yuuri may have been in charge now, but Beskudnikov was Viktor’s connection, and it was not Yuuri’s place to threaten him.

Across the table, Yuuri tilted his head and made a faux penitent face at him. It included a mocking pout that made Viktor’s blood pressure rise. Still, he said nothing.

Yuuri had become insufferable in public. Viktor didn't know if he should accept his behavior for what it was, or challenge it as posturing. He had resolved until now to do nothing, because he doubted that there _was_ anything to do for it. Penitence had proven a long and arduous trial. Viktor spent much of it in silence, or on his knees.

“You’ll bet on my win, won’t you?” Hours later, when the sun had slipped below the skyline and Petersburg nightlife was nearly as seedy as Kabukicho’s, Yuuri stepped too close and tipped his chin as if to kiss him. “Tonight?”

“You want me to put money into the Vladimirsky pools?” Viktor stepped away carefully. They were in a private room in a Plisetsky fighting club. There was little room for him to step far from Katsuki Yuuri, however deeply he may have wanted to. “For what purpose?”

Yuuri preened. “For fun, Viktor.” He inspected the scarring of his naked back in the mirror. He appeared more proud of the branding than he had been vulnerable, months before. They were trophies of survival. He would show them off tonight. “I’m a veteran of the entertainment business. Enjoyment is all I can ask of you.”

“This isn’t necessary.” Viktor had conceded, of course, but that did not mean he approved of Yuuri’s whim to fight in the Vladimirsky rings. He didn't understand the drive for it. Perhaps he had grown bored of ruling Viktor’s kingdom already. Viktor himself could understand and sympathize with the restlessness of a king, but he didn't feel the need to whet any bloodthirsty appetite in order to combat it.

_Two different worlds._ He grasped now what Yuuri had meant. Perhaps they were both royalty now, but Yuuri had been a soldier, a runner, and an assassin first.

“I don’t aim for necessary,” Yuuri said. He beckoned Viktor to him and entreated him wordlessly to wrap his hands. Viktor considered briefly the repercussions of a refusal. “I aim for impressive.”

“And this is impressive?” Viktor asked doubtfully. “A famous drug lord on the fight roster with the rest of the underground’s rabble?”

“They're your rabble, aren't they?” Yuuri pointed out. When Viktor did not take the tape, Yuuri pressed it into his hands. “Regardless, I’m keeping you from sulking in your bedroom all night. Think of it as my gift to you.”

“I find choosing to bleed in public, when given the chance to avoid such a thing, rather undignified.”

“Spare me,” Yuuri said dismissively, and when Viktor still made no move to wrap his hands, he dipped his head at their too-close fingers. “Please.”

But touching him, even clinically like this, was too familiar for Viktor’s liking. When they had been more to each other, when Yuuri had still fought for sport and when he had begun to teach Plisetsky his first lessons, they had made a ritual of this. Bandaging his hands. Quick, precise contact and sharp trust that came with the knowledge that, should Viktor err in this process, Yuuri could break several bones in his hand. Viktor hesitated to revisit these memories through touch now.

“Viktor.” He had stalled for too long. Katsuki Yuuri was blinking at him with a lazy sort of smile. “I promise not to bite.”

“Yes.” Viktor Nikiforov set about wrapping his hands. Yuuri’s knuckles sported new rawness--the genesis of which Viktor had not been present to witness--and he frowned now. “What…” Contact lingered at the softer skin between Yuuri’s little and ring finger, and Viktor removed his hand quickly. “What are these?”

Surprisingly, Yuuri did not withdraw his own fingers in a bid for secrecy. Rather firmly, he placed his hand back in Viktor’s and nodded for him to continue with his previous business. “I was practicing,” he said, inexplicably. Viktor’s frown deepened.

“For this?” He couldn't fathom what about a seedy Petersburg fight ring could excite Yuuri so much to drive him to _train_ for it. As if Katsuki Yuuri needed further training, as if he was not enough as he was. Viktor found the idea nearly laughable. “Why?”

“I am a veteran of the entertainment business,” Yuuri intoned cryptically. Viktor gave up on wondering what ever drove Katsuki Yuuri to do the things he did and concluded his work on his left hand efficiently. Quick fingers moved on to the right hand. Habit had fast replaced poise, and he held the unspooled roll of fighters’ tape between his teeth as he worked. The rhythm of the job was second nature now. He did not look at Yuuri’s face, did not look at any part of him that was not his hands.

And suddenly Viktor remembered how in love he had been with these hands, the things he had done to them and the things he had begged for them to do to him. A strange compulsion to kiss them came over him now.

_Don’t_. He couldn't help himself.

_He will not like it._ He wouldn't, and neither would Viktor. This was not desire; it was a breakdown. He would not fool himself into believing it was anything else.

_Not to mention that he will punish you._ Surely. Swiftly. And painfully.

Against his better judgement, Viktor Nikiforov did it anyway.

He placed his mouth over the blue veins at Katsuki Yuuri’s wrist, and then he did nothing at all. Beneath his lips, blood pumped as if desperate to escape his touch, but Yuuri himself did not move. Even his hands did not tremble.

Viktor held his breath.

“Is that all?” Yuuri asked quietly, and there was the tremor missing from his hands. It had found its way into his voice. “Are you finished?”

_No,_ Viktor tried to say, but his lips were still against skin and coherent speech was a challenge that way. He withdrew his mouth a fraction of a centimeter to murmur, “Would you like me to be finished?” He kept his eyes averted. Yuuri’s fingers curled fractionally.

“I don't care one way or another,” he whispered. _Please,_ his body said. Viktor felt the heat of his palm warm his throat.

There had been another pre-fighting ritual they had shared, years ago. Viktor would never have dared to replicate it on his own, but this was damn near a spoken invitation, wasn't it?

Again, like he had the night he had found Katsuki Yuuri’s door unlocked and the man himself asleep in his bed, Viktor imagined his teeth on the scars of his back.

He raised his head, dragged his gaze upward, and finally looked Katsuki Yuuri in the eyes. His voice was perfectly soft. “Can I touch them?”

For his part, Yuuri’s expression did not change. He didn't even blink. But carefully, silently, he removed his hands from Viktor’s grip and slowly turned his back to him. Viktor caught his watchful gaze in the mirror and nodded.

He started at the first scar, which lashed its way from the edge of his shoulder across his spine. Viktor knew enough about killing a man to know Yuuri was lucky to have survived such an injury.

Reverently, he traced his palm over the raised edge of the scar. His voice had fled him. He felt immense remorse for this. For being, however directly or indirectly, the reason for this. The wound had slashed into two pieces the tiger inked alongside his spinal cord.

“Tell me their names.” In the mirror, Yuuri blinked. Viktor too was surprised at the ferocity to his voice. He did not remember making the decision to even say such a thing.

But, ever the showman, Yuuri offered him an indulgent smile. “And what would you do with their names?”

Viktor didn't know. Viktor said, “Please.”

Yuuri shrugged, and Viktor felt the ripple of muscle beneath his palm. He tightened his jaw. “If you insist,” Yuuri said flippantly, and the curve of his mouth became sharper.

He said, “One of them was called Tetsuya Takahashi. He gave me this.” Yuuri brought a wrapped hand up to the line of his jaw and tapped beneath his chin. A white line, stark against the dark ink on his throat, sat under his nail. “He was placed on row long after me. I reckon he’s still alive.”

Viktor traced the path of another, shorter scar along his shoulder blade silently. He felt when muscles tensed in Yuuri’s back and pulled his hands away resolutely. “I’m--”

“That’s fine.” But Yuuri’s teeth were clenched. His body was alive with nerves. Viktor feared to provoke him again. “Just cold.” He rolled his shoulders to shake out the tension, but the cords of his neck remained tight. Viktor weighed the value of his hands against the ache in his ribs that begged to _touch_. The latter, as it always did, won.

“Can I--” He broke off the request when Yuuri nodded sharply. The heels of both his palms were laid flat against his shoulder blades before Viktor had the clarity of thought to check himself, but Yuuri did not hurt him. He didn’t even flinch. He tipped his chin upward and squared his shoulders.

“Then there was Kawana Tengo,” he said as Viktor worked the knots from his back firmly. “A lesser family than mine, and I believe it made him a bit angry.” A smile, a humorless laugh. “Fukada Tamotsu I had met before he tried to kill me. That familiarity always makes it more exciting, I think.” Viktor ignored the jab. “Not there, please.”

Viktor shifted his hands from the midsection of his back obediently and moved on. Yuuri tipped his head to the side to allow him access to the space between his neck and shoulder without words, and Viktor felt suddenly conscious of this action. How easily, how thoughtlessly, they had fallen back into old rituals. He wondered if Yuuri, in his silence, was suddenly thinking the same.

“I--” he began, but did not continue. In the reflection of the mirror, Viktor saw him frown. “I--that's enough. Thank you.”

“Yes.” Viktor dropped his hands to his sides, and his face warmed. This was unwise. This was humiliating. He was always baring, condemning, destroying himself in this way. “Sorry. It--it was just--”

“Force of habit.” Yuuri checked the gauze over his knuckles, tugging on the wrappings to check the merit of Viktor’s handiwork. “I know.”

Unbidden and unwise, Viktor asked, “Would you kill them? The men who--the ones from Fuchū?”

A knock at the door. Giacometti perhaps, or one of the fight’s coordinators come to fetch their celebrities. Yuuri did not spare Viktor Nikiforov a glance.

“Oh, yes,” he said serenely. “Without a moment’s hesitation.”

Viktor watched him stride to the door and could not help himself from saying, “I could make that happen.”

“Mm. Could you?” Yuuri hummed. Then smiled. “Is this your penitence, my dear?”

“Would you accept it?” His voice had grown earnest, and desperate. Viktor suddenly desired a bullet in the foot, as it would have been less painful. A distraction. “Because I can--I can do that.”

Katsuki Yuuri tilted his head sideways and blinked at him. With amusement, he whispered, “It is dangerous to make promises you have no ability to keep, Viktor Nikiforov.”

And then he opened the door, and he left, and Viktor was alone.

It took him a long while to follow. By the time he had made his way to the balcony, nodding distractedly at Chris as he pressed a drink into Viktor’s hands, Yuuri was leaning casually against a wall, watching a woman in the ring break her much larger opponent’s nose.

“This is foolish,” Christophe Giacometti said, and Viktor nodded. “He’s showing off, and it's embarrassing.”

“He’s trying to prove something,” Viktor murmured. He sipped at the drink Chris had given him and recognized the sharp burn of gin. “I have no idea to whom.”

“Really?” Chris snorted, then pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “No idea?”

“I don't care for what you're proposing.” On the club floor, Yuuri’s eyes flickered from the fight in the ring to where Viktor was standing, studying him still. Quickly, Viktor cast his gaze into his drink.

“Have you fucked yet?” Chris did not miss the tension suddenly electric between the two of them, and it was never like him to let such a moment to embarrass Viktor Nikiforov slide. Viktor cut his eyes at his best friend, but he did not rise to the bait.

“No,” Chris decided, resolutely and halfway to himself. “I would know.”

_This_ , Viktor couldn't allow. He scowled. “You wouldn't--”

“Spare me.” The familiar words warmed the hollow of Viktor’s throat. He took a larger sip of the gin. “I always knew. You goddamn nearly bled with it.”

The previous fight had ended. Viktor watched Yuuri duck into the ring, avoid the slippery smears of blood in the center of the dias with an air of distaste, and tightened his grip on his glass. “Which one of us?”

“I’m sorry?” Chris toyed with an unlit cigarette between his fingers. His resolution to quit had been short-lived. Viktor suspected he had been the driving force behind his best friend taking up nicotine again.

“With which one of us could you always tell?”

Christophe smiled and laughed a short, absent laugh. “You, of course, Vik. I couldn't get an honest thing out of Katsuki for three years.” He gestured at Viktor with his cigarette. “But you're an open book.”

Viktor Nikiforov watched Yuuri dip his head and speak quietly to the winner of the previous fight. She was small, lithe, and the way she tossed her dark head was familiar.

Chris was watching too. Wryly, he asked, “Didn't tell you about that, did he?” The click of a lighter, a spark of tiny flame, flashed in Viktor’s peripheral. “See what I mean?”

In the ring, Nishigori Yuko clasped her fingers around the back of Katsuki Yuuri’s neck and pressed a kiss to his cheek which left a faint bloodstain on the skin. They both lifted their heads in concert, and when Yuuri again met Viktor’s eyes, Yuko laughed. 

* * *

 

Phichit Chulanont couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned and contemplated various methods of insurrection for several eternities before he kicked the bedsheets from his ankles and sat on the edge of the mattress.

He had already received a hefty punishment for letting Yuuri kill that man publicly months ago, as if Phichit had had any power or say in the matter. But even then, Likhoyedev had been a wanted man too. His life was no major loss to either Moscow or Tokyo, and Phichit’s punishment had been naught but a slap on the wrist in comparison to what he would receive if he attempted what he was thinking.

He wanted to leave. He had been mistaken when he thought he did not loathe Russia. Every waking moment he spent in the country had become unbearable. He didn't want to _die_ here, and he no longer wanted to live here either.

He could leave. He was nobody--the name Phichit Chulanont would hardly ring a bell at Fuchū or anywhere else in Japan now or in the near future. Disappearing was possible, and no less dangerous than his current occupation. Fuchū had bigger problems than a parole officer who simply fell off the map one day.

He could do it. He could leave. Or he could follow orders. A few forays into underage drinking at university aside, Phichit Chulanont had never broken the law.

As it was, there was really no question of what was to be done.

Phichit fell back onto the wrinkled sheets and went to sleep like that, legs still swung over the side of the bed and arm flung over his eyes to quash the pressure building behind his eyes. The world outside his window was quiet.

* * *

 

Yuuri had given Nishigori Yuko his suitcoat. She wore it slung about the shoulders when she sat before Viktor’s table and crossed her bare legs elegantly. There was blood smeared at the corners of her mouth.

“Did you watch the fight?” she asked in lieu of greeting. “I won.”

“Yuko,” Viktor said, and the younger woman narrowed her eyes at him.

“When did you become so familiar with me that you invite yourself to my name?” she asked serenely, and Chris made a sound like he had choked on his own cigarette smoke. Nishigori Yuko looked at him as if she was just realizing his presence. “What do you smoke?”

Christophe offered her the pack of Gauloises wordlessly, and she selected a cigarette with bruised, bloodied fingers. Yuko took her time lighting it before she deigned to speak.

“You know, you two were the reason I started smoking in the first place.” Viktor realized belatedly she was speaking to him. Below them, Yuuri had just taken a hard hit in the face. Viktor’s handiwork on his knuckles was already bloodstained. Yuko continued, “Worrying about Yuuri always drove me to bad habits.”

“He has a particular affinity for driving all kinds of people to bad habits,” Viktor said, distractedly. Yuko’s eyes rolled to the ceiling so wholly Viktor glimpsed their whites.

“Whatever.” She shrugged off Yuuri’s jacket casually, as if she found the weight of it displeasing. “Mariticide is a bit more serious than a bad habit, Nikiforov.”

“Don’t you have to repeat the action to make it a habit?” Chris drawled. Yuko smiled sharply at him.

“Which one are you again?”

Chris blinked. Hastily, Viktor said, “Christophe Giacometti. Nishigori Yuko. You’ve met.”

“Ah.” Yuko tapped glowing ash off the tip of her cigarette. “Swiss. You’re engaged.”

“Yes.” Viktor saw the war between confusion and irritation waging on Chris’ face. “You must be a fan.”

Nishigori waved a hand dismissively. “I don't have the time. Yuuri tells me the important things.”

“What concerns does Katsuki Yuuri have about my marital status?” Chris raised his eyebrows.

“The same that the two of you have about the names of my daughters, I’m sure,” Yuko said. She tilted her head condescendingly. “Insurance.”

“Does Katsuki think dragging his old girlfriend to Petersburg to threaten me will make me afraid?” Chris asked, dangerously quiet. Over Yuko’s shoulder, Yuuri broke the fingers of his opponent’s right hand.

“I’m not threatening you, Giacometti.” Yuko folded her hand beneath her chin and blinked at him in a way that was chillingly reminiscent of the other Okukawas. “You will know when I threaten you.”

Viktor closed his eyes briefly and summoned the energy to demand, “Then forgive my asking, then, but what are you here for?”

There was a fish tattooed down her forearm in red ink. Viktor recognized it as a twin to the piece Yuuri boasted in the same location. Yuko rubbed a thumb over the lines contemplatively, and when she spoke her voice was quiet. “If you remember from when you sought me out months ago, Viktor Nikiforov, I no longer work with Okukawa Minako.”

“I remember,” Viktor said. Nishigori Yuko’s chest rose and fell softly, the movement of her breathing more noticeable with the absence of a shirt. She and Katsuki appeared to share their lack of shame as well.

Yuuri’s old surrogate sister said, “I have recently accepted an offer to work with Minako again. For Yuuri’s sake.” She looked Viktor in the eyes sharply. “He does not know it is for that reason, and you will not tell him so. That’s not why I am here.”

Softly, she said, “I am here to make you a deal.”

“No,” Christophe said immediately, and Viktor shot him such a scathing look that the former ducked his head apologetically. “I’m sorry. That’s not my place.”

“No,” Yuko agreed, amused. “But I appreciate the honest reaction.”

“What kind of deal?” Viktor demanded.

Calmly, Yuko turned her head and studied the current fight. Yuuri was winning. He always won.

“I want to keep him alive.” Her dark hair, which had been tied up during her fight, tumbled about her shoulders. Viktor recalled how affectionately Yuuri always spoke of Yuko, like she hung the goddamn stars, and could find nothing of that supposed softness here. The woman before him was every inch an Okukawa, regardless if it was still in name or not.

“And what does that have to do with me?”

Yuko looked at him, and she laughed.

“I want _you_ to keep him alive, Viktor Nikiforov.” She traced the line of her own jaw in contemplation. “In return, I can offer you protection from what is about to come.”

Viktor narrowed his eyes. “I don't understand.”

“Mm.” Yuko smiled. “Moscow doesn't like you. Neither does Tokyo. Yuuri’s reappearance has proved to the public you are no longer untouchable. Don't tell me you haven't noticed.”

Viktor did not tell her so. He had noticed, very much.

“I hardly need a Kyoto club owner’s protection from my own country, Nishigori.” He set down his drink; his fingers were stiff from gripping the glass. “But thank you for the offer.”

_“I'm_ not offering you protection from Moscow,” Yuko said derisively. “Don't presume I care about you nearly that much. I’ll leave those matters to Yuuri.”

Sharply, “I don't expect _his_ protection either--”

“Interesting, since it's so clear Katsuki Yuuri is the only thing currently keeping you alive, Nikiforov.”

“Bullshit,” Chris snapped. “You give him too much credit.”

Yuko tipped her chin upward. Her chest was marked with the seven stars of the Chil-Sung-Pa; the scarring on her throat was an even clearer indicator of the many ways she had earned her honorary place in the Korean gang. “I grew up alongside Yuuri. The credit I give him is long overdue.”

“This is ridiculous.” Viktor shook his head. “I’m not entertaining this.”

“I don't see you leaving,” said Yuko simply. “Which can only mean that you want to know what I have to offer, _anata.”_

_Too far._

Abruptly, Viktor stood from the table. Chris looked at him sharply, but Nishigori Yuko concerned herself only with a short drag from her cigarette. Her smile was roundly satisfied.

“You’re too bold,” Viktor snapped. “I’m leaving.”

“You aren't. Sit down.” Yuko gestured for him to return to his seat, then shrugged when he did not. “Fine. Then allow me to be completely honest: I do not like you.” Viktor did not rise to the obvious bait, and so she continued. “I have never liked you, even before you fucked up so entirely it took all of Minako’s insurance against me to keep me from flying to Saint Petersburg to kill you myself.”

She blinked up at him. “I was already thinking of leaving, you understand. I had just found out I was pregnant.” Compulsively, her fingers returned to the red koi on her forearm. “I loved Yuuri, so much I was willing to sacrifice that to put a bullet in your damned head. I’m still willing to do so.”

Viktor stared at her. He had lost track of Katsuki’s fight, but the sudden uproar of the crowd told him that something of import had occurred. He couldn't bring himself to care.

“And yet,” Nishigori said quietly, “I am not here to kill you. That speaks to my case, doesn't it? There’s something larger at stake than the many issues I have with your continued existence, _anata.”_

“Please…” Viktor closed his eyes, gripped the back of his chair to keep himself from swaying. “I could do without the condescension.”

“I only ask of you that you keep Katsuki Yuuri alive. In return, I’ll keep you alive.”

“You couldn't manage--”

“I’m once again a secondary heir to the most powerful family in Japan, Viktor Nikiforov. I have no control over what happens in Russia, but back in Tokyo, what I say is law.” There was no jest, no insincerity to her tone. “If I say you live, I promise you the ninkyō-dantai will ensure that you do.”

“And then I owe you.” Viktor shook his head. “I know how these things work, Nishigori. I will not sign my soul away to Tokyo.”

“Why not? You did it once.” Yuko smiled. “Or are you concerned it will become another bad habit?”

“Don't _mock_ me.”

“Then don't be stupid,” Yuko bit back. The softness which Yuuri was always so concerned would ruin Nishigori Yuko was nowhere to be seen. She was all edges, just like her schoolmate. Viktor wondered what they had been like before, when circumstances had allowed them to be gentle. He hadn’t known either Yuko or Yuuri back when they had still been soft.

Quietly, Yuko said, “Recognize what I am offering you, and accept it while the deal still stands. Your kingdom is about to come crashing down on your fucking head.”

_Says who?_ Yes, perhaps business was worse than it had been, and Katsuki’s reappearance had indeed thrown a wrench into the steadiness of things. But this was the first Viktor had heard of a prophesied end to this dangerously unstable empire.

He looked to Chris, who rubbed tiredly at his eyes. His best friend shrugged. Nishigori Yuko put out her cigarette and reached for Yuuri’s coat slung on the back of her chair. The sight of the elegant black material and the dried blood packed beneath her nails would become a visceral memory.

Softly, slowly, Viktor nodded.

Below them, around the ring, a cry broke out. Yuuri had won his fight. It had been a quick match, though when Viktor cast his gaze to the club floor, he found himself momentarily in awe of the scene. There was so much _blood_ \--more than was usual even for these no-holds-barred fights.

Relatively stable even with the evidence of what was clearly an against-regulations switchblade slashed into his chest, Katsuki Yuuri stood alone among it all. His face was tipped upwards, eyes closed, but it was clear that he knew Viktor was watching. The small smile on his lips was evidence enough of this.

And because he could not bear the thought of having to meet Yuuri’s knowing gaze now or ever again, Viktor Nikiforov looked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im alive! and im so sorry this took five grueling weeks to get out; i just finished up my semester and between four exams and the few thousand words i had to write about the politics of modern art the past two weeks, i had little energy or motivation to even look at the draft for this chapter. but, finally, it's up. i hope it meets expectations.
> 
> i hope to post the final part to my other fic before my next semester starts--but first I need to write it. if you've also been waiting on an update to that fic, know i haven't forgotten about it! it'll be up in a few weeks, hopefully.
> 
> also, ive been meaning to respond to comments for weeks now (im a mess, im sorry). im not ignoring anyone, and every single comment i receive does make my day. if you've left a book rec or asked a question or said anything kind at all, i really do appreciate it! (also, i thrive on book recommendations. pls do leave some more, if you'd like.)
> 
> as always, thanks for all comments and kudos! and happy holidays
> 
> xx


	15. Confidante

Yuuri dreamt of killing Viktor Nikiforov, and he dreamt of it often.

These were not plagues exclusive to the nighttime, and he found himself caught in them too frequently now. As if Minako’s visit, Yuko’s advice, the ever-creeping deadline on Viktor Nikiforov’s life as a free man and Katsuki Yuuri’s life full-stop--as if all these variables had inspired an even deeper taste for violence, even as Yuuri himself found them, more frequently than ever, no less than undignified.

Months ago, he might have dared to call them fantasies. Causing Viktor Nikiforov harm back when he had hated him without caveat had carried a particular deep-seated thrill. The recurring nightmare Yuuri nursed now about slitting him open from throat to navel in the same bathtub in which Yuuri’s own heart had stopped in would have been cathartic, at the least. _Deliciously macabre_ was a bit more on the nose.

Now, the dream-heavy heft of a knife in his hands inspired fear more than satiated a desire for retribution. Now, Yuuri avoided sleep as often as possible.

He hadn't been _scared_ of himself in ages--not since he was eighteen. He was scared of himself now.

“Is this where you spend your nights now?” Yuuri was in the library. He was always in the goddamn library. He should consider less conspicuous hiding places.

Yuuri said, “Occasionally.” He did not turn to look him in the eyes. “Do you mind?”

“No.” Viktor sounded as if he was laughing at him. Yuuri could not bear the thought. “Though you do have a bedroom for a reason.”

“I don't _sleep_ here,” Yuuri snapped, turning sharply on his heel to face him. Viktor tilted his head.

“Do you sleep at all?” He made a cursory inspection of Yuuri’s person. “You don't look like it, lately.”

“That's none of your concern.”

Viktor Nikiforov raised his eyebrows. “It is if you’re now running my business. Are you going to answer the question?”

One hand braced against the side of his face, the other against the back of his head. That’s all it would take to break his neck. Yuuri would hardly even find it difficult. And it would be more merciful than anything Moscow or Tokyo would invent for him.

Katsuki Yuuri clenched his jaw. He would not kill Viktor Nikiforov. He would not. He couldn't afford to, even if he did find it a prettier alternative to the shambling mess of nerves and unwanted emotion Yuuri was fast becoming.

 _Seven months._ He had seven months to figure out how he was going to get out of Saint Petersburg alive. There were no plans which allowed for the assassination of his former partner. Katsuki Yuuri needed to get a grip.

Quietly, Yuuri said, “Please don't.” He wasn't quite sure was it was he was asking for. But Viktor seemed to know, even if he did not.

“You should get some sleep,” he insisted gently. “In your own bed.”

“I didn’t ask to be coddled.”

“I am not coddling you.” Viktor smiled, and it was more sad than mocking. “But you look as if you're about to collapse, and I’d hate to leave you on the floor all night.”

Yuuri couldn't get any sleep. He felt horrors creeping beneath his skin even now, and he knew that sleep would be no reprieve.

He wondered if he would kill Viktor again tonight, or if it would be the other way around.

Again to avoid his eyes, Katsuki Yuuri looked elsewhere. “Please,” he said quietly. “I’d rather be alone.”

From his respectable distance from Yuuri, Viktor nodded. “Alright,” he murmured. “Good night, Yuuri.” He left before Yuuri could muster the energy to respond.

Months ago, this would not have happened. Months ago, Yuuri would never have admitted to a weakness as trite as an inability to sleep. Months ago, Viktor would never have respected his wishes for the subject to be abandoned. Yuuri didn't know what this change in the way they spoke to one another meant for him, but he did not like it.

“You're treading dangerous waters, my dear,” Yuko had said to him, the night of Yuuri’s fight. The admonishment had been low, in Japanese, and had come with an audience. Viktor Nikiforov had tipped his head slightly as he strode before them, in a futile effort to pretend he was not curious about the conversation. “This won't end well if you don’t pick a side.”

“I've picked a side.” Yuko had changed her clothes, given Yuuri back all the pieces to his suit, and the image of her dressed smartly with blood smeared on her throat revisited him now. “You know what I’ve chosen.”

His childhood best friend had smiled at him, and it had been pitying. “That's not a winning side, love.”

“I don't care.” He didn't. He didn't. He _didn't_. “There are no winning sides.”

Yuko had cast her gaze ahead of them, at Viktor and Christophe trying their damnedest to appear uninterested in the quiet Japanese exchange behind them. Yuko said, “You could come home.”

“I could _not,”_ snapped Yuuri, and his vision swam. He had been hit hard in his fight. This was not a discussion he wanted to have within earshot of Viktor Nikiforov, regardless of the language in which it was spoken. “You know I will not.”

A whisper. “Yes.” Yuko shook her head, smiled softly. “I know.”

In the Camaro, Yuuri and Yuko sat in the back, and Yuko asked him, “Have you seen my daughters?”

“No,” Yuuri said, relieved, because it was true and because he could not take the silence a moment longer. Yuko passed him her slim black phone, and Yuuri flicked through the multitude of photos of three little girls with Yuko’s nose and Takeshi’s mouth. He did not look at Yuko when he said, “I’m happy for you.”

Yuko snorted, disbelieving. Now Yuuri looked at her. “I mean it,” he said quietly. He handed her back the phone. The photograph on the dimmed screen was one of Takeshi balancing one of the toddlers on his shoulders. He looked fearsome--as he should--but also kind. Yuuri found it an unfathomable combination. “I do.”

“Attachments make business more dangerous,” Yuko said. She tucked her phone back into her coat. “She was right about that, at least.”

 _She_ being Minako, of course. Solemnly, Yuuri nodded. He felt the warmth of a hand over his, and he did not flinch. Yuko’s palms were as callused as his own.

“I’m afraid for you, Yuuri,” she said, lightly, so as not to betray the sincerity of their conversation to their Russian audience. Quietly, Yuuri laughed.

“Attachments,” he said, just as lightly. Yuko hummed in agreement.

On the passenger side, Christophe Giacometti murmured to Nikiforov, _“Revnuyushchiy?”_ and Yuuri looked up. Met Viktor’s fleeting gaze in the rearview and allowed a sharp smile to curve his lips.

 _“Zaviduyushchiy,”_ he corrected Chris, and even sibilant as it was the word had bite. The connotation was meant to wound, and wound it did. Viktor Nikiforov’s eyes narrowed, momentarily, before he looked away.

“What did you tell him?” Yuko asked quietly. Yuuri did not betray the contents of their brief discussion, but he made certain that her hand remained over his for the rest of the drive.

But Yuko was gone, now. She had spent the week on Nevsky Prospekt, slept in Yuuri’s room because she wisely did not trust Viktor to give her a bed of her own. They had revisited old comforts in the few nights she had stayed, Yuuri’s head in her lap, Yuko running her fingers gently through his hair until sleep claimed him. It had been difficult, in those moments, to separate seventeen-year-old Yuuri from his twenty-seven-year-old counterpart.

Yuko’s absence hurt him now, more than it had before she had come.

Even if her leaving was necessary. Yuko had a family--one which had not elected to disown her, one which had chosen her even as she was both cruel and gentle--and Yuko had responsibilities. She had daughters, and a husband. Yuuri had neither.

Yuuri had a mother and father who feared him and a sister who hated him. He loved his family still, in some way he could not easily explain, but it was different. Yuko had obligations to be present, to stay alive. Yuuri had no such promises hanging over his head, and thus he could not fault Yuko her leaving. He could not even begin to understand.

He could call her now--Yuko, that was. But Kyoto was hours ahead of Saint Petersburg, and he wished not to wake her in the early hours of the morning. Katsuki Yuuri was no child, and thus he had no excuse for dragging Yuko from her bed for the sake of a few nightmares.

_Stupid._

There were drugs which would put him to sleep and keep him there, easily. Yuuri considered sedatives for a short moment as well, before resolving that trapping himself under chemical sleep would not be wise nor help him avoid dreaming. Ketamine might even make the dreams brighter, and he had no wish for that.

Yuuri was sober when he found himself before Viktor Nikiforov’s bedroom door, and so he had absolutely no excuse for what transpired there. He hesitated only a moment before knocking once, twice, three times on the door.

The following silence was agonizing. In the stretch of quiet, Yuuri felt his heart crawl upwards into his mouth, and he contemplated leaving. Viktor would have no evidence to claim that it had been Yuuri at his door in the late, late evening, and surely he could escape this now with a shred of pride intact if he left before Viktor could see him like this.

The bedroom door swung open and damned Katsuki Yuuri in one combined effort. He blinked, and Viktor Nikiforov braced his forearm against the door jamb and leaned sleepily against it.

“Yes?” he asked, and the word caught on the edge of a yawn and his fingers fluttered against his own mouth when he attempted to disguise it. Behind him, Viktor’s dog lifted his head from the bedsheets but did not expend the effort to greet Yuuri. Fine. He deserved the cool reception, perhaps.“It's morning.”

And it was. An hour past midnight, though this would have been a trifling detail when they were younger. Past midnight was early--that was when the real monsters came into the streets to play. That had been the time Yuuri and Viktor had always had their fun.

And Yuuri hated himself for speaking, for furthering his own humiliation. But he could do nothing else, and Viktor was already here. Yuuri said, “Would you like a drink?” and drowsily, Nikiforov laughed.

 _Please say no. Please say no._ He could salvage this, if Viktor said no. One of his hands came upward in light imitation of a shrug, and Viktor Nikiforov said quietly, “I’d love one.”

Damn him. Damn him, and damn Yuuri too. Viktor gestured for Yuuri to step inside, and unwittingly, Yuuri followed orders. At first, Viktor invited him to sit on the bed, unmade and slept-in and still claimed drowsily by a poodle now, and Yuuri virtuously declined. Blood rose unbidden to his face, and he cast his gaze downward before Viktor could see him redden.

Then Viktor offered him a seat in the chaise near the window, and he sat quietly. Watched Viktor move about the space in the slightly clumsy way of those who had recently been woken from sleep and still struggled telling dreams from waking reality.

This was a bad idea.

Viktor kept brandy in his room, and though it was hypocritical considering how Yuuri stocked his cabinets, the latter could not resist a raised eyebrow at the fact. Viktor saw the goading in his expression and politely ignored it. When he made to pour Yuuri a glass, Yuuri objected with a wave of his hand.

He said sharply, “I’ll do it,” and Viktor looked equal parts amused and hurt.

“Do you still think I’m going to poison you, Katsuki Yuuri?” he asked with a quiet laugh. There was an edge to the sound which almost made Yuuri flinch. “I respect you a bit more than that.”

Katsuki Yuuri only blinked at him. After a moment’s pause, Viktor passed his own glass to Yuuri and poured himself a drink in the second. He sat on the edge of his own bed and purposefully caught his gaze on some intangible thing above Yuuri’s head.

Yuuri warmed the glass in his hands before he drank. Viktor did not, though he did not knock back the entirety of its contents as Yuuri had expected either. Viktor saw Yuuri watching him too finely and tipped up his chin.

Viktor said, “I’m not--” as if to justify some unknown crime to them both. Yuuri looked guiltily to his own hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I shouldn't think--” But he, too, could not finish, and for several moments they sat in silence. When Yuuri at last looked up from his entwined fingers, Viktor was watching him, rather unabashedly.

He looked too soft, too gentle like this, hair mussed from bed, gaze unfocused even as he met Yuuri’s eyes. His mouth was less sharp, and he moved drowsily, as if sleep still clung to him. The lack of any terrible thing about him for Yuuri to hate made him hate him more, on principle.

He should have called Yuko, he should have turned to drugs, he should have done any number of things before he came to Viktor Nikiforov’s door. This was unwise. Yuuri was wrong, so very wrong, to have come. The brandy shook in his hands, and the warmth it left in his throat was suddenly vile. And Viktor still would not take his eyes off of him.

“Don't _look_ at me like that,” Yuuri said, too fiercely, and it made him flinch and much as it did Viktor Nikiforov. Having returned his head tiredly to his paws, Makkachin’s ears twitched.

Viktor looked downward. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, and the fact that he did indeed look sorry only made Yuuri want to curse him more. He was not made for forgiveness, Katsuki Yuuri, and every moment more he spent in the Nikiforov estate was proving this, twice over.

Still, he remained outwardly calm. His lower lip trembled, his pulse fluttered beneath his jaw, but Yuuri kept any evidence that he was losing his mind from his voice and the set of his shoulders. Tersely, he said, “I shouldn't have woken you. I apologize.” He set his drink firmly on the floor beside the chaise. Brandy made him tired, and he would not inhibit himself in that way tonight. “I’ll leave now.”

“No--I mean--” Viktor extended the arm which held his drink outward to Yuuri, as if he intended to stop him, and then paused. Closed his eyes and took an uneven breath. “I’m sorry. I just mean--you don't have to.”

Levelly: “I would like to.” But Yuuri did not stand. Viktor did not speak. Yuuri looked at the unmade sheets of his bed and felt as if he was weighed down by several impossibly heavy stones.

Yuuri said, quietly, “I haven't slept very much, lately.” Viktor cast his gaze into the amber contents of his glass and nodded.

“I've noticed.”

Unbidden, Yuuri found himself continuing. He whispered, “I don't know why. I would like to, but I just--” He blinked. “I’m sorry. I shouldn't have woken you.”

“I don't mind,” Viktor said. Yuuri felt a confession creep up his throat and found himself not caring enough to smother it.

He confessed, “I’m going to die here.” Viktor Nikiforov looked at him, unreadable as stone.

“It won't be by my hand,” he said measuredly, and Yuuri laughed.

“It never will be, will it?”

Yuuri was too dizzy to catch the emotion that drew from him, but he hoped, cruelly, it was visceral. He made to rub his eyes and found he was wearing his glasses, though he could not remember when he had put them on. His fingertips smudged the lenses, and he removed them in sudden irritation.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “I won't let you die here,” and now Yuuri looked at him. His jaw was tight.

“You keep making these promises, love. Do you get off on assigning yourself impossible tasks for my benefit? Or is it the breaking of them?” He was breathing too quickly, two steps from panic now. _Are you laughing at me?_

Surely, surely he was. He had been laughing at him for years.

“Yuuri.” Viktor said it again, in the same gently coaxing tone of voice, and again, until Yuuri would look at him. Then he said nothing.

Yuuri felt as if he might come to tears, and he wasn't sure why.

“Would you like me to walk you back to your room?” asked Viktor, softly. “Otherwise, you are welcome to stay here for the night.”

Sharply, Yuuri snapped, “I don't--”

“Trust me. I figured.”

_It would have been private. That's how killing Nikolai was._

Yuuri felt his heart climb again into his mouth. It sat on his tongue as coins did in the mouths of corpses, and he could not speak.

“Regardless, the offer stands.”

Barely a whisper, hardly audible even to Yuuri’s own ears: “I won't accept an offer like that ever again.”

Viktor’s expression became suddenly steel. “That's not what this is,” he snapped back, and Yuuri was half-inclined by the offense in his tone to believe him. “You really think I would--”

“I don't know what I think,” Yuuri snarled, though he was too tired for true anger. The retort left his mouth more quietly desperate than vicious. Finally--though Yuuri hadn't known he was expecting it--Makkachin lifted his head at the reply and gave Yuuri one long, forlorn look.

Yuuri could not stifle a quiet, shuddery sigh, and then he placed his own head silently in his hands. He was going to lose it. He needed to get out of here--this room, this house, this city. Russia in its entirety.

He heard it, the rustling of the bed linens, the creak of the floorboards, when Viktor stood, but Yuuri did not look up. What could he do to him, here, that Yuuri had not already dreamed over and over and over again? There was no fear left in him. He was so tired.

_You would have killed me like Nikolai?_

And the horror in his voice then, as if Viktor Nikiforov, the goddamn Devil of Saint Petersburg, could not even venture to fathom such a thing. _No. No._

He was such a _liar_.

Viktor did not ask before he sat beside Yuuri, and he did not ask before he touched him, and any other day Yuuri would have taken this unsolicited contact as an invitation to remove his fingernails. Now, he found he couldn't care whether Viktor wanted to touch him or not. Or maybe he did, really, and craved it. Maybe he didn't know.

For Viktor touched him like this: a gentle, inquisitive hand at his shoulder, which made Yuuri suppress a shiver. From his shoulder, fingertips venturing across the width of his back to his spine, where he worked to mold from the rigid mess of muscle first forgiving, then begrudgingly relaxed tissues. Yuuri felt the tense slope to his shoulders give way, felt his arms which were holding up his head lose their conviction to their cause, felt when his own hands fell away and Yuuri leaned back into Viktor’s touch rather than fall forward.

“I don't…” he began softly, but Viktor murmured something wordless beside him and Yuuri’s words shifted quietly into a sigh. Viktor Nikiforov carved out with his hands the individual vertebrae of Yuuri’s spine, and something deep within him pulled, ached, gave way tidally. Common sense became drowsy want, and Yuuri _wanted_ this, even if he could no longer explain what it was.

“What is it,” Viktor murmured, as he touched Yuuri chastely through the fabric of his sweater, “that keeps you from sleeping?”

Yuuri blinked. He had closed his eyes, leaned heavily into Viktor Nikiforov’s side, without recollection of doing either. Yuuri felt his mouth turn soft with syllables when he confessed, “Dreaming.”

“Dreaming?” Viktor had not yet ventured to kiss him, and Yuuri thought vaguely that this was why he allowed this to continue. Touching him like this, like he had before Yuuri’s fight when he had asked to see his scars, could be explained away as something shallow, or conversely something with ulterior motives beyond simple _touch_. But if Viktor meant to kiss him, Yuuri would not be capable of permitting it. Even if he wished to. The action was much too honest. “Dreaming of what?”

“You know of what.” Yuuri was possessed of the halfway-inclination to lay his head in Viktor Nikiforov’s lap, as he had done years ago, and to fall asleep. Something intrinsic--a final shred of common sense, perhaps--prevented him from doing so.

“Oh, Yura.” Objection, even to the use of such a name, found no place within him. His eyes were closed again, mouth soft, limbs weighed with the seductive beginning of sleep. He could do as Viktor had suggested, in this moment, regardless of the foolishness of the idea. He could sleep here.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Dream something else tonight,” as his hands turned Yuuri’s face into his shoulder rather than away. Yuuri was so _tired_. He let him do it. “Dream of home.”

“Mm,” Yuuri murmured, because something begged him to protest at that, though now that he had done it he could not remember what. He imagined (or maybe he dreamt, already) that Viktor smiled, but sadly.

“I've never been there,” he continued in the same soft tone, “so I fear I can't describe it in any way it deserves. There are hot springs, yes?”

“Hm.” And he had always been so _good_ at this, story-telling and dream-weaving and talking Yuuri down, too. It was the same coercive magic he wove when he spoke to strangers and made them believe they were special, when he read to Yuuri and drew the last dregs of tired resistance from his bones, when he made the men and women who worked for him love him enough that they would happily die for or at his hand. Viktor was excellent at persuasion, and at asking others to believe him no matter how unbelievable. It was what had won him this position, after all.

Yuuri hated it--and then he didn't.

“Hot springs,” Viktor repeated quietly. “And the kitchen where your mother cooks, and the old room where you used to sleep. You get snow in Hasetsu, don't you?”

“Mm,” Yuuri replied noncommittally, and so it continued, until the brimming panic he had felt when Viktor had asked him to stay was even less than a memory, until Yuuri would have happily slept in Viktor Nikiforov’s room for the warmth of it alone. Until he remained sober, but became utterly stupid with sleep.

Viktor said then, “I’m going to take you back to your bedroom, Yuuri. Do you mind if I carry you?” and Yuuri couldn't have minded even if he had tried. He attempted to shake his head, then opted for a quiet permissive murmur. He vaguely registered the sound of Makkachin leaping down from the bed and following Viktor into the hall, and then nothing.

* * *

 

Christophe found him in his study, among stacks of files and a disastrous spread of loose reports cast over his desk. He found him not working, but gazing inexplicably into space.

“You look busy,” he said, and Viktor started. Like he hadn’t known he was there, though Chris had made no effort to surprise him.

“Do you knock anymore? Or call?” He had propped his elbows on the surface of his desk, had cradled his cheek in his hand, and now he corrected this. Straightened his spine, cleared his throat, shook his head. The glassy sheen to his eyes remained.

It was late morning. The room was warm and well-lit from the window which stretched from floor to ceiling on the adjacent wall. Viktor Nikiforov looked pale.

Chris said, “I’ve never called. Knocking only gives you a chance to compose yourself, and I’d rather you didn't lie to me.”

Viktor said, “Chris,” like a sigh. Like an admonishment, if only he had the energy for displeasure.

“What are you doing?” He went to the desk now, plucked a single sheet of paper from the mess. The notice was stamped with the Kremlin seal, and marked classified. “I didn't think we were in the business of stealing government secrets. Where did you get these?”

Viktor waved a hand. “Georgi. Leo and Guang-Hong came to deliver them today.”

“I see.” Grigori Beskudnikov’s face stared solemnly back from the paper. The subcaption beneath his name read _Janus Operative_. “I don't like that.”

Viktor tipped his chin to see of which file Chris spoke, then glimpsed Beskudnikov and laughed drily. “I don't either. You know what I like even less?”

He pulled another report from the pile, gave it a cursory glance before passing it to Chris. “Remember when he went to Athens?”

Chris nodded. It had been five or so months ago, in the spring. A business trip.

Viktor let his head fall into his hands again. This time, the dry laughter was muffled by his palms, then his fingers as he dragged them down his face. “Didn't go to Athens,” he mumbled, at the same time that Chris read this for himself.

“Tokyo,” he said, and Viktor closed his eyes.

Nishigori Yuko’s words revisited him now: _Moscow doesn't like you. Neither does Tokyo._

“We’re dead men,” Viktor whispered. “Every single one of us.”

“No.” This information had sent Chris reeling, undeniably, but even he could Viktor was jumping too quickly to conclusions now. “This doesn't prove what you think. We don't know how much Beskudnikov knows, but we can find out.”

“Chris.” Viktor’s head was still in his hands. He sounded two steps from hysterics. Chris wondered if this despair was due to Beskudnikov, or something else. “I let Yuuri into my room last night.”

Now Chris closed his eyes. The room was warm, but his throat had grown cold. Of course he had. _Of course._

He sighed. “And what did you do?”

“Nothing,” Viktor said. It was barely a whisper, barely a suggestion at all. “I didn't do anything.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?” It was a lie. But Viktor needed a lie at the moment. And Chris needed a rational chief of command. “Look at me.”

Chris took him by the jaw, not roughly, and turned his face upward to meet his eyes. “You have bigger problems than Katsuki Yuuri now. Let him be. We’ll handle this together, and then you can go back to worrying about that. Yes?”

Against his palm, Viktor Nikiforov nodded. His pulse ticked beneath his jaw too quickly for calm, and Chris folded his hand against Viktor’s cheek without invitation. Viktor leaned into the contact, then frowned.

“I’m an idiot,” he murmured. “Aren’t I?”

Chris made himself laugh. “At least you're finally coming to terms with it.” Viktor Nikiforov smiled, a ghost of an expression.

Chris took the Beskudnikov file with him when he left.

* * *

 

“You won't tell anyone.” Yuuri had threatened him, after the fact, for his silence. “Not Giacometti, not Babicheva. Not Feltsman.”

Guilt had colored his cheeks, and Viktor had looked away so not to display it. “I would hardly tell _Yakov--”_

“It will not happen again.” Yuuri had been adamant about this. “So there is no reason for anyone to know.”

Viktor had looked at him in silence, and Yuuri had held his gaze icily. Only the tremor in his hands showed that he was afraid.

 _Are you ashamed too?_ Viktor had thought to ask. He had decided against it, for fear of bodily injury. But it became a pressing question, as the days wore on and Yuuri broke his own vows and it did happen again, and again. _Are you ashamed of me? Of this?_

Nothing ever occurred between them--and Viktor was too afraid to even broach such a subject, knowing that to Yuuri, the line between sex and violence was too often blurred now. And Yuuri was still firm in his convictions that he would never again accept an invitation to Viktor’s bed, would never stay the night, regardless of the connotation. There was nothing to be ashamed of, unless it was the fact that Yuuri was allowing himself to be led astray again. Allowing himself to be foolish, and soft.

 _Are you ashamed?_ As Yuuri drowsily tapped the blue veins of Viktor’s wrist, as he lay on the chaise and let Viktor’s dog clamber over his legs and rest his head on Yuuri’s chest, as he paused once with a drink to his lips and let his expression become suddenly cool when he caught Viktor gazing at him too softly. _Or are you hiding something?_

(This question, at least, he could answer himself. Yuuri was always hiding something.)

Still, despite his ardent wishes, Yuuri came to his bedroom often enough now that people began to notice a change in the way he carried himself around Viktor Nikiforov.

“He’s certainly quick to forgive,” Mila remarked one morning over the hood of the Camaro, as if it was of no interest to her. She handed Viktor a latte he had not requested, as she did many mornings when she had upset him and found bribery less distasteful than apology. “Or is he just that desperate?”

“Mila.” _That's not--_

But he couldn't exactly say _what_ it was, could he? Especially if Viktor himself did not know. There was no pattern to the visits, no clear motivation on Yuuri’s part to continue to come.

For sometimes he came and talked of business, of Yuko and Minako and Fuchū and anything else he thought might get under Viktor’s skin. Other times he brought a book with him, and spent half his time watching Viktor busily avoid him from over the pages. More rarely he came and did not speak, electing instead to drink Viktor’s brandy until he became lovely and sleepy and it took tremendous effort from Viktor not to put his fingers to his lips when he drifted off in his chair.

Sometimes, Viktor thought he would have cut his own hand off to keep from touching him.

“What?” Mila connected the heel of her boot with his ankle in what, had it been anyone else, might have been naught but a teasing gesture, but because Mila was Mila, was obviously meant to wound. Viktor frowned. “Were you going to defend him just now, Vitenka?”

“No.” He wasn't. He wasn't.

Mila studied his face for too long. “You were,” she said, triumphant as she was disapproving. “You were going to defend him.”

“That's none of your--”

“Does Yakov know?” And now Viktor looked at her fiercely, and his voice was hard.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Aw, Vik,” Mila began, companionable as she always was when she held the advantage. “You know what I mean. Have you told him yet?”

“There’s nothing to tell.” His collar had become too tight. His hair crept into his eyes and he pushed it back irritably. The air was hot with summer. “And I’m not entertaining this any further, Babicheva.”

“Viktor,” she said, and the sincerity was what held him. Mila was not _sincere_ ever, and especially not when she spoke to Viktor. When he dared to glance at her, he found that her ever-mocking smile was gone. “You know that’s unwise.”

“I don't know _what_ you're talking about, Babicheva--” Viktor began heatedly, and Mila said, “Stop that. I know you're not as stupid as you like to pretend.”

“Thank you,” he spat. “Thank you. Though you could do to remember that I could take your rank for that.”

“You couldn't. Not with him in charge.” Which was true, and it drove Viktor mad. “And you wouldn't, anyway. You need me.”

Viktor lied, “I don't.” Mila looked at him almost pityingly.

“When did this start?”

In lieu of response, Viktor wrenched open the car door and gestured sharply with his head for Mila to leave his side and sit in the passenger seat. “Get in the car.”

Mila did. In the car, she said, “Oh, Viktor,” and Viktor scowled.

“Please don’t,” he said, but she was continuing and he lacked the energy to stop her.

“Don't fool yourself into pitying him, Vitya. You know that's what he wants, and you know why he wants it.”

Viktor shook his head. He didn't know why. He didn't know anything about what Yuuri wanted or why, and that was precisely the problem. He was so goddamn difficult to read.

“I--” God, he was an idiot. This was not information he could afford to give Mila Babicheva, of all people. But he needed to tell _someone_. (Chris, in many ways little but an extension of himself, didn't often count.) Viktor was going to lose his mind over it otherwise.

“He’s--he’s been coming to my room,” Viktor confessed suddenly, almost unintentionally. But there was no taking it back anymore; there never had been any taking it back, since Viktor first allowed him over the threshold to his bedroom. “At night.”

“So you're fucking him again,” Mila said, point-blank. Her voice was curiously hollow. Viktor shook his head fiercely.

“I’m not.”

“Then what _are_ you doing, Viktor, because at this point sleeping with him strikes me as the _least_ of all the possible evils here--”

“I’m not--” His fingers tightened around the steering wheel until he lost feeling in them. “I’m not doing anything. With him.”

“Then _what--”_

“He has--he has these dreams,” Viktor said, and he was damned if Katsuki ever found out about this divulgence of his secrets. He had made Viktor _promise_. “He comes to my room when he can't sleep.”

“And do you check under his bed for fucking monsters and tuck him back in for the night too?” Mila snapped viciously. “For god’s sake, Viktor. You're going to get yourself assassinated.”

“I--”

“You think that's true? About the nightmares?” Mila said the word like it was almost offensive to her. “You think Katsuki Yuuri comes to _you_ , for comfort?”

“I don't--” _Know_. Viktor, it was widely known by now, didn't think of these things. He had just wanted to be a confidante, had wanted to be important, special, essential. He hadn’t ever considered that Yuuri knew him well enough to recognize the childish drive to be favored, knew him well enough to take advantage of such a thing.

 _A confidante._ Oh, how Yuuri must be laughing at him.

Mila Babicheva said scornfully, “If he really has nightmares, Viktor Nikiforov, I can promise you that you are the _cause_ , not the solution.”

“No.” Because it didn't make sense. This was not how Yuuri did things. Vulnerability may have been an art form to him, but the face he wore in Viktor’s bedroom in recent weeks was too earnest, too messy for Yuuri’s taste. He was always artfully undone, when his softness was a ruse. Viktor knew, by now, the difference between Yuuri’s unmaking as a performance and the truth. “That's not what this is.”

“You're a moron.” Mila scowled. “An infatuated, blind moron.”

“I’m _not--”_

“Do not _lie_ to me, Viktor,” she snapped, and Viktor paused. Let the rest of the protest wither in his mouth, and nodded. He had no energy for lying anyway.

“Now.” Mila inspected her cuticles. “You’re going to tell me how fucked we are, and I’m going to do my best to fix it. Do you love him, Viktor Nikiforov?”

It was difficult to answer such a question while driving. Viktor had shown time and time again that he lacked the attention span and the focus to bare his soul and keep to the correct side of the road at the same time. He kept his silence for several moments, and then he said, “No.”

There was a stretch of silence in which Mila studied his face for evidence of a lie. Viktor knew there was none; he had confessed the truth. After a pause, Mila said, “Good. I’m glad.” Then she said, “We’re going to make sure it stays that way.”

“Do you really think I would--”

“I think you are selfish and arrogant and short-sighted, and you will fall for anything a pretty man tells you because you believe you deserve his kindness simply for being pretty yourself. I think Katsuki Yuuri knows you better than _you_ know you, Viktor Nikiforov, and he also knows how to manipulate that.” She cut herself off, made an obvious effort at controlling the diatribe, and when she spoke again her voice was soft. “I think you want to believe in this because you are guilty, and because you are lonely. I don't begrudge you that, Vitya.”

“Don’t insult me,” Viktor said, quietly, but it was not _selfish_ nor _arrogant_ which had upset him. _Lonely_ was a bit much, however--a bit too maudlin, and a bit too trite.

Mila hummed. “I said nothing which was not true.” She gazed out the window, and her fingers tapped an unfamiliar rhythm on her thigh. “What do you do, when he visits?”

Viktor Nikiforov regarded her warily for as long as he could spare the road his gaze. “Nothing,” he said, and though it was the truth it sounded even to him like a lie. “Nothing, and I don’t appreciate the insinuation--”

“Would you shut up with that righteous shit?” Mila scowled. “I just needed an answer. How often?”

The obvious attempts at interrogation were disconcerting. Viktor frowned, but answered honestly. “Often, now. Sometimes every other night.”

“And would you say he trusts you now? Enough to not kill him?”

Viktor thought again of books and mouths and brandy and Yuuri’s fingers tapping lazily on his pulse. He thought of the way Yuuri had taken to inviting Makkachin onto his lap when he arrived, and his habit of leaving his glass half drunk and perspiring on the cover of his latest discarded novel while he spoke.

“Yes,” Viktor Nikiforov said, quietly. “Yes. Enough.”

Mila Babicheva looked at him, and she smiled.

* * *

 

Katsuki Yuuri pulled back the slide on the handgun and emptied several rounds into the target. Yuri Plisetsky found it no easier to hide his flinch as the assault progressed. When he was done, Katsuki Yuuri reaffixed the gun’s safety and set it down, and Yuri Plisetsky found that his hands were shaking.

Katsuki had begun teaching a new kind of lessons, and sometimes Viktor came, uninvited, to supervise. It did not appear that Katsuki cared for his guidance.

“Reload it.” It took a moment for the realization that Katsuki was speaking to him, and not Viktor. “Now.”

He did not protest the order. Yuri looked between Katsuki and Nikiforov with an air of mild panic. He didn't know how to reload a gun. He didn't even know how to fire one.

He knew what it felt like to have the barrel of one pressed to the back of one’s head, what kind of bruises bloomed across one’s cheek when it collided with the face, what it was like to feel the removal of the safety reverberate through his skull when it was jammed against his temple. He knew all the unpleasant feelings that came with being on the wrong end of a handgun, but he did not know how to work one.

And Katsuki knew it. Yuri saw him tilt his head curiously, and then frown.

“You don't know how to reload it,” he said, and it was not a question. Yuri looked to Nikiforov before he could help it, then remembered that he would not plead Viktor’s sympathy. He would not ask anything of Viktor Nikiforov ever again.

_(He knew. He knew. He knew he knew he knew.)_

Yuri Plisetsky scowled. Lifted his chin.

“I was never taught. You neglected that part of our lessons.”

Katsuki looked at him shrewdly, and Yuri thought for a moment he would hit him. Instead, he said, “There is much less fault in a boy of thirteen lacking the knowledge to defend himself than one of sixteen. Especially one who fetches such a high price on the black market.” Yuri Plisetsky scowled.

Katsuki said, “Viktor Nikiforov. When did you learn to use a gun?”

Viktor’s fingers drifted to his own temple. He was awfully absent-minded lately, even more so than Yuri usually noted (though perhaps he was simply noticing it moreso now that he hated him). Yuri hoped his absent-mindedness had nothing to do with Katsuki, and knew he was probably wrong.

Quietly: “I was twelve.”

“Early than I,” said Yuuri, and it had proven his point. He narrowed his eyes at Nikiforov. “After Barcelona, why did you not think to give your heir the same means to protect himself?”

“I was not quite royalty at the time I learned.” Viktor’s voice had sharpened. Yuri watched the handgun between the three of them and found newfound appreciation in its emptiness. “Learning was necessary to being useful to the family at the time.”

“Is a dead prince useful to you?” Yuri thought now to object to being discussed as a commodity, as if he was not present, but did not. He watched the handgun, which remained within Yuuri’s reach. He so wished it wasn't.

Yuri Plisetsky had learned things about himself since he was thirteen, since the gala in which he had gotten a bit too tipsy and spoken his mind a bit too freely, since he had last seen Mila Babicheva in the Nikiforov estate. Yuri Plisetsky had become fascinated with violence, and terrified of it too. He wondered if this was how Katsuki and Nikiforov had felt when they were sixteen too, and which of them that meant Yuri would grow to mirror now.

Viktor began, “I wanted--” and Yuuri interrupted, “What? You wanted what?”

When Viktor did not answer, Yuuri dipped his head. “Pick it up, and I’ll show you how to reload it.”

Yuri Plisetsky did as he was told.

* * *

 

Christophe Giacometti knew his best friend well enough to know he would not handle the Beskudnikov matter well on his own. He also knew that, when Viktor Nikiforov set his mind to ruination--whether it be that of others or his own--there was no convincing him otherwise, and Chris’ own counsel would be ignored. The best someone like Christophe could manage was damage control.

This is why he went to speak with Katsuki Yuuri.

“Yuuri.” The use of a given name was a bold move. Chris and Katsuki Yuuri had been on friendly terms, years ago, even if Yuuri had always expressed--sometimes physically--how he disliked Chris’s hands-on approach to friendship. Chris didn't think he had called him anything but _Katsuki_ since his prodigal return. “Can I have a word?”

There was something about him that exuded cruelty now. Perhaps it was the way he looked up at him from beneath dark lashes, a perverse imitation of that skill at which Chris and Katsuki both excelled. Perhaps it was the memory of Nishigori Yuko saying _insurance_ in that Vladimirsky fight club, of Katsuki Yuuri saying _zaviduyushchiy_ in Viktor’s car.

Either way, Chris would not entertain it. His expression purposefully did not change when Yuuri said lowly, “Business hours are over. Come back tomorrow.”

“Humor me.” Katsuki was lounging on the sofa in Viktor’s sitting room, where the untitled Basquiat work had once overseen the entirety of the room like some awful god. It had been since replaced by something of Kabakov design, three canvases awash in green. Chris thought they made the room seem more desolate than lavish; indeed, he had borne disinterested witness to an unnecessarily long argument between Viktor and Georgi on the connotations of decorating the estate with Soviet-era art pieces. Stolen or not, there was something distasteful about all that Kabakovian grey.

Uninvited, Chris sat on the sofa beside Katsuki Yuuri, though he was careful to keep his throat and the rest of his vitals decidedly out of reach of any sharp thing Katsuki happened to have on his person. He had always carried a knife on him, for as long as Chris had known him.

“You are pushing the boundaries of my kindness,” Katsuki said, quietly, and Chris snorted.

“Is that what you call it?” He crossed his legs at the knee and leaned comfortably backward. “All this time, you've been kind to us?”

Yuuri looked at him levelly. “Kind as you deserve.”

Christophe Giacometti held his gaze bravely for several moments. Then he nodded. “Fair enough.”

Silence stretched between them, until Katsuki extended his arm before them both and gestured at the opposing wall. “I cared for the Basquiat more.”

“Viktor didn’t.” Chris dipped his head. Trivial conversation, but it was easier than the alternative. He was grateful to be speaking to Katsuki at all, at this point in the game. “Though I would agree with you in that respect. I think he’s making an effort to appear more Russian, in light of past years.”

“Russian or not,” Yuuri said, and his smile was nearly amused, “it needn’t be so ugly.”

“Don't tell Georgi that,” Chris replied lightly. “He’s never found much issue with you before, but that might diminish his respect a bit.”

“Gosha respects me,” Yuuri mused, as if the concept was unexpected but mildly entertaining. “I can die fulfilled.”

Christophe Giacometti snorted. Beside him, Yuuri looked a tad pleased. The ensuing silence was more comfortable now.

“I think,” began Chris anew, though he did not look at Katsuki Yuuri for fear of inciting something of unpredictable consequence in him. “It was not so much the art, itself, but the connotation of owning a Basquiat that made him...dispose of it.”

“Viktor always read too deeply into simpler things,” Yuuri said dismissively. “Books, art, sex, whatever. Idle hands, and all that.” There was an edge of something new to his tone, but Chris did not think it was malice.

“He died at twenty-seven, you know. Overdose.” Chris cleared his throat. “Basquiat, I mean.”

It took several eternal moments for Yuuri to respond. When he did, he nodded slowly. _“Most young kings get their heads cut off.”_

“I think--” Chris shook his head. Sighed. Started again. “Why are you still here, Katsuki Yuuri?”

And Yuuri laughed, like it was an ignorant question. When Chris looked at him, there was no humor to the lines of his face.

He said, “Where else would I go?”

“You’ve proven what you came to prove. You could never be safe or comfortable here again, and you know that. Why stay?”

Yuuri tipped back his head and gazed imploringly at the ceiling. Chris restrained himself from mimicking his actions to see what it was that drew his attention. “I don’t owe you an answer to that.”

“You do.” Anger was bleeding into his voice now. Chris couldn’t help it; oftentimes, enduring a conversation with Katsuki Yuuri was like striking one up with a marginally less carnivorous sphinx, and Chris was sick of talking in circles. “Because the only reason I can see for you to stay is to kill him, and I’ll be _damned_ before I let--”

“Would you die for him?” The question caught Christophe off guard, and he was on his feet before he had made the decision to do so.

“I don’t owe you an answer to that.”

Katsuki Yuuri surveyed him calmly. Chris wondered how he had it had come to _this_. He and Yuuri had gotten along, faster and more easily than even Yuuri and Viktor at the genesis of it. Where had the three of them gone wrong?

 _Blind loyalty._ That’s what it had been. They had all suffered afflictions of it.

“You wouldn’t.” Though it ought to have been a smug reply, there was no satisfaction to Katsuki’s tone. He looked as honest as Chris has seen him of late. “I can see it in your face, you wouldn’t. But he thinks you would.”

Teeth clenched. “Viktor thinks a lot of foolish things.”

“But this is a foolish thing which could kill him,” Katsuki Yuuri said. “He trusts you to die for him, if need be. That’s what a right hand does.”

“I hardly value a lecture on this matter from _you_ , Katsuki Yuuri. Do not presume--”

“Why are you still here, Christophe Giacometti?”

Chris snarled. “Don’t make this about me. This isn’t about me.”

“It could be.” Still, Yuuri’s expression was honest. This conversation was honest. Katsuki and Giacometti lied in the same ways, and Chris fancied he would know if Yuuri was deceiving him. The fact that he did appear to be telling the truth was somehow more terrifying. “You could do great things in Switzerland. You could rule the Geneva market. Your family, fiancé, everyone--you could make them kings. Fuck Viktor Nikiforov. Why are you still here?”

Christophe Giacometti closed his eyes. This was not what he had wanted. These were truths which had plagued him for years now, and he was not appreciative of the way Katsuki Yuuri was spitting them back into his face now.

Quietly: “There’s nothing for me elsewhere. You know I couldn’t...I couldn’t.”

“Yes.” Katsuki Yuuri nodded, unsmiling. Solemnity made him look older--so often now Chris had regarded him as immortal and unaging, unkillable even when it was most inconvenient for him to be, that he forgot that Katsuki Yuuri was younger than he. “I know you couldn’t. You need him. He has made you need him, and he acts like it doesn’t even matter. Like it’s of _no consequence.”_

It was true. Chris hated that it was true.

“There is the reason I did not seek your help when I wanted to take charge here, Giacometti. I don’t fault you it, but it is the truth. You love him too much to leave. The only difference between you and I in that respect is that you would, if the time came, let him die for your own sake. Correct?”

Rather than provide a response, Chris gritted his teeth. “I need to know if you're planning to hurt him. He’s stupid, and I suspect he--” Full stop. Chris cleared his throat. “He’s stupid, but I can’t have anything happen to him.”

Katsuki inspected his cuticles calmly. “If I were planning to hurt him, why would I tell you, Giacometti?”

“Listen.” _Listen_. Chris didn't even know where he was going with this. There was no logical explanation for him to expect that Yuuri would divulge all his secrets to a man that had sat by and watched him bleed out. But Chris thought, perhaps, he and Katsuki Yuuri were more similar than either of them cared to admit. “He deserves the worst of what you could do to him. I know that, I know the two of us did not end on the best of terms either--”

Katsuki laughed sharply, and Chris remembered his own voice saying, _That's enough. Time to leave_. He felt sick.

“Listen. I don't care about that, right now. Yuko said that you were--are--interested in keeping him alive. Protecting him from Moscow. I can offer you the same. I need--”

“Yuko said that?” His voice was delicately serene. Chris tasted blood in his mouth. “Interesting, that she did not think to consult me beforehand.”

Chris said, “She made us a deal,” and Katsuki laughed.

“Shouldn't you have learned by now not to make deals with Okukawas? Even as last resorts?”

 _Lie_. It was the only course of action left. “She’s not an Okukawa anymore.”

“Shut up.” Yuuri was standing now too. “You know what this is like. There is no _end_ to being an Okukawa. You made a deal with one, and then you tried to back out, and now you are paying the consequences. Do you think Yuko is kinder than me?” There was a thin edge of panic to the words. Chris tread more softly now.

“That's not what I came to discuss.” _Please_. “We have larger enemies than the Okukawas now. I’m asking you to get us through this, and we will do the same for you. And then you can do whatever you’d like to him.”

“You act like I’m at all interested in preserving this family,” Yuuri said softly.

“You are. Don’t lie.” His pulse quickened in his throat. “If you weren’t, you would have gone to Minako and stayed there. This is your legacy, and you don't want to see it toppled by Moscow.” _God_ , Chris hoped it was true. If not, they were very likely all dead men.

Katsuki Yuuri gazed at him for a very long time. Then he said, quietly, “You deserve much less than this,” and Chris nodded.

“Thank you.” He knew it. But he knew more than that that Katsuki would make him feel it, thrice over, when the time came.

He hoped it was worth it.

* * *

 

He was in Viktor Nikiforov’s room again. He was always in Viktor’s goddamn room, lately. He was always damning himself.

Tonight was different from other nights, however. Yuuri was not drinking. Viktor was sprawled on his bed, rather than sat across from Yuuri as he usually was. His head hung over the edge of the bed, and he looked lovely and young and irreverent as he read. He was not looking at Yuuri, though Yuuri was watching him.

And this--this lack of attention, and this supposed _trust_ between them that allowed Viktor to be so blithe in Yuuri’s presence now--was somehow suddenly unbearable. Katsuki Yuuri was on his feet and at the edge of the bed before he knew so, and he sat at the foot of it without invitation.

And now Viktor looked at him, in surprise but, terribly, not in fear. Anger at this simmered somewhere in Yuuri’s chest, found outlet in whispery thoughts which pronounced _how dare he be unafraid? How dare he be comfortable, now?_ In that moment, Yuuri wanted him to be afraid, as much as he wanted Viktor to want him, and he said, “Viktor,” sharply enough to let him know it.

Gently, Viktor Nikiforov smiled. “Yuuri.” He laid the book on his chest, and tilted his head curiously. At the strange angle he was, the movement was almost comical. Yuuri hated it. “You look…” He lifted his hand as if to gesture, or caress, some part of his face, but paused before he did so. His hand remained in the space between them, hesitant, and Viktor frowned. “Upset.”

And Yuuri was upset, though he couldn't fathom why. He blamed this angry confusion for what he did next.

He moved his head, turned his face so he met the palm of Viktor’s hand with his mouth, and Viktor’s own mouth was a soft, bloodless wound. He murmured something incoherent, and Yuuri used his teeth to trace the lines of his palm, nip a bit too sharply at the tender flesh between his fingers.

“Yuuri,” Viktor said, and he was less softly undone than he was gently concerned. “What--”

It was difficult, with his mind and his mouth and his gaze otherwise preoccupied, for Yuuri to shift his position on Viktor’s bed, but he persisted in the aforementioned business as he pulled his knees to his chest and then underneath him, laid a hand against Viktor’s forearm and drew his palm more firmly to his mouth.

“I don't--” And he always had to goddamn _talk_ , didn't he? Yuuri snarled, pinned his wrist to the sheets, and relocated his teeth to his throat. Whatever Viktor Nikiforov had designed to tell him was lost in a gasp, a gently worrisome laugh. “Are you sure you--”

 _“Vitya,”_ Yuuri whispered, just to keep him quiet, and Viktor fell finally silent. His pulse was wild beneath his jaw, his throat delicately exposed with his head still hanging, rather like a corpse in some Renaissance sculpture or some pre-Raphaelite painting, off the edge of the bed. He gasped again, less worrisome now, when Yuuri slipped above his hips, trembled and arched his spine to elicit as many more points of desperate contact between them as possible, let his mouth fall open and his eyes close when Yuuri cradled in a hand the base of his skull and lifted his head from the empty space beyond the bed.

“Yuuri,” he whispered, as if he'd never whispered it before, as if the word was absolution and creation and ending all in one, as if words held tangible power and Viktor was tasting it for the first time. Katsuki Yuuri could have talked him off any precipice in this moment, and he knew it. Viktor Nikiforov was easy--he had always been. _“God,_ Yuuri.”

“Mm,” Yuuri agreed, and smiled against his throat, his jaw, the perfect imploring shape of his mouth. He smiled as Viktor begged _please_ , smiled as the blade slipped from his pocket to his fingers, smiled as he drew the edge of it beautifully along the artery in his neck which boasted such a pretty pulse.

There was a moment--a millisecond, barely, but he fancied it was longer--in which Viktor was still kissing him, in which Yuuri had paused in his reciprocation but Viktor had not yet realized he was dying.

Then it was gone. Viktor opened his eyes, gasped in a way which was sure to draw more blood into his lungs, and then gave a gentle cough. Yuuri outlined his jaw with the barest touch of his lips and felt Viktor’s blood wet his own throat.

“Oh,” Viktor murmured, belatedly, and the understatement nearly made Yuuri laugh. The need to do so, nearly desperate as it was, momentarily sealed off his throat.

Remarkably, Viktor had already begun to tremble, and Yuuri pressed his fingers to the open wound as if that would staunch the bleeding. He wasn’t sure what he meant by it.

“Hey,” he murmured, still supporting his head above open air, and Yuuri pressed his brow to Viktor’s as if he was gathering his courage for some terrible thing. Yuuri’s nose bumped his, Viktor’s eyelashes brushed against his as his eyes fluttered open, shut. “It’s alright. Shh, shh. Vitya. _Anata_. It’s quick.”

It was, and mercifully so. Yuuri had done it in worse ways, slower ways, plenty of times before.

Choking, as if he had meant to say something and found obstacle in the sheer amount of blood in his throat. Blood had begun to spill from the corners of his mouth, and Yuuri frowned and wiped a rivulet of scarlet away with his fingers. The slimy wetness on his palm revealed itself to be more blood, from when Yuuri had pressed his hand against the wound at his carotid, and he succeeded only in smearing the stuff further across Viktor’s cheek.

And it was a tragic scene, but a bit beautiful too. He doubted Viktor would have seen the loveliness of it, however, so he refrained from pointing it out.

Yuuri hummed gently, some tune he himself did not recognize, and pressed his lips apologetically to Viktor’s sharp, high cheekbones. “Shh. It’s quick, _anata_. My gift to you.”

More blood in his mouth. Yuuri contemplated briefly the nightmare it would be to drown in one’s own blood, to lie on one’s back and feel it pooling in the lungs, slithering down the throat, and felt his lips twitch in distaste.

Suddenly, as if the compulsion had taken up home in his chest like a physical ache, he felt the need to explain himself. Still cradling his head, though Viktor’s eyes had since drifted closed and there was a death rattle in his lungs, Yuuri whispered, “You’d have chosen this way, anyway, had I given you the choice. Beats the alternative, love.”

 _Love_. Yuuri felt the inexplicable desire to laugh. Instead, what rose up from his chest was a strangled sob.

He extricated himself from the tangle of Viktor’s limbs, slid down from his place above his chest, but did not leave. Rather, he knelt again on the bed and pulled Viktor’s head gently into his lap. Laid a palm flat against his brow and wiped away the dampness at his temples, then brought his fingers slowly and carefully through his hair. Viktor made as if to say something--Yuuri’s name, perhaps, or more likely to tell him to meet him in hell--and Yuuri shook his own head.

“It’s okay, Vitya. Hush. I know.” He continued to stroke his hair, carding deep crimson through silver. “It hurts. God, I know. Best to sleep then, isn't it?” Something thick in his own throat, a sting to his eyes. Katsuki Yuuri realized with abject horror that he was _crying_ over this.

“Best to sleep, _anata.”_ Yuuri closed his own eyes. “I’ll meet you there eventually.”

And Yuuri woke--safe and clean and guiltless of any recent murder--before he had to feel him die.

He double-checked, triple-checked his hands to be sure they were bloodless, and then he brought them to his face. _Christ. Fuck_. He was going to drive himself mad before next May, if he kept on like this.

It was still dark, presumably late night or the ungodliest early hours of the morning. Yuuri contemplated his odds of falling back asleep after such a nightmare and found them slim. He made as if to slip out of bed without sitting up first, but tangled his legs in the sheets and ended up on the floor instead. Katsuki Yuuri swore, and felt thick emotion rise in his throat again.

God _damn_ him. He was better than this. Coming to tears over Viktor Nikiforov was a silly habit of his old self, and it had no place here.

Besides, he hadn't even killed him. Not really, and not tonight at least. Yuuri hadn’t left his room all night, and if some harm had befallen Viktor during the evening, for once it would be no fault of Katsuki Yuuri’s.

It had been a dream. That was all.

Still, he laid his cheek against the cool hardwood floor, curled his fingers into a tight fist in the sheets, and allowed himself one moment of a lapse in composure. This was why he avoided sleep lately. This was why he so often felt like a corpse on damned strings, making a goddamn fool of himself because he couldn't find the courage to face his own nightmares. This was why he had taken to visiting Viktor Nikiforov.

It was not a habit he would indulge now. Yuuri was trembling too earnestly to pretend he was not terrified, and he would not allow Viktor the satisfaction of seeing Yuuri terrified again. He disentangled his legs from the sheets and stood, then staggered to his desk. The room was dark, and he swept his forearm across the desk’s surface in search of a lamp switch, casting countless petty things--paperweights, letter openers, a few razor blades from a still unbridled predilection for stimulants--to the floor.

With the light on, it was easier to absolve himself of that particular sin. His hands were clean, his eyes still hazy with sleep, and the only blood on his person was a thin slice into the flesh where his outer forearm had caught the sharp edge of a razor. As he watched, the cut began to bleed, and then sting.

 _Safe_. He was safe. He had not killed Viktor Nikiforov. He hadn’t.

Still. _Prove it._

He straightened his spine, stepped carefully around the sharp things and various drug paraphernalia on the floor, and strode to the bed. Hooked by the collar a sweater he had worn the night before last and since cast aside and shrugged it on, before doing the same with a few other necessary articles of clothing. And then he left the room, with the desk light still on.

He knew the way to Viktor’s bedroom from his own so intrinsically now, that even in his half-asleep, panicked state of being finding him was a simple endeavor. Knocking on his door, less so.

_Prove it._

He had to, or he would get no more sleep tonight. His guilty conscience would keep him up, pacing, fretting, contemplating further substance abuse until the morning. Yuuri simply didn't have the time, nor the luxury, to forfeit more sleep.

Yuuri knocked.

There was a heavy silence between him and what lay beyond the door, and then a quiet, sleep-heavy muttering with which Yuuri had once been quite familiar. He imagined Viktor Nikiforov as he undoubtedly was: undressed, disheveled, expression soft and face unlined and younger, as it always appeared when one had just woken from an untroubled sleep. He pictured him fumbling clumsily with something on his desk, as he could hear him doing now, and then stumbling to the door. Swinging it open without regard for what was waiting on the other side, and rubbing heavily at his eyes rather than properly greeting him.

“S’late,” he mumbled. He looked too dreamily through Katsuki Yuuri, and it was evident he was not quite awake yet, as Yuuri was. “What’re you--”

But Yuuri was already stepping smartly backwards, already turning, and as he was saying _sorry sorry I didn't mean--I only needed to check--to know--_ Viktor was only just beginning to frown.

“Yuuri,” he said, as if they were his first words to him here on this threshold, as if he was only just now recognizing him, and Yuuri remembered him whispering, _god, Yuuri,_ in a quite dissimilar tone as he spun to leave. “No, Yura--wait--”

His fingers closed around his upper arm, and his grip was not tight but somehow Yuuri found it impossible to tug himself from it. At the very instance of contact between them, something within him crumbled, gave way, and he felt his legs nearly go out from under him. It was only Viktor’s grip which ensured they did not.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri mumbled, still turned aside, his gaze cast to the floor. “I just needed to check--I don't--” He took a deep, shuddery breath and felt as if his lungs would collapse. “It was stupid of me, but--”

“Do you want to come inside?”

The question was unexpected, undeserved, and it nearly brought him to tears. But he did want to come inside, he found then, and he hated himself for it.

Furiously, he shook his head. “I need to go--to go back--”

“Yuuri.” He looked at him now, and saw the same gentle dreaminess to his gaze. He was still drunk off something, or high perhaps, or perhaps simply had been more deeply asleep than Yuuri had at first judged him. Regardless, he did not look like he was possessing of the type of clarity one required to invite another into their bedroom in the dark of the night. “I’ll sleep in the chair.”

“I don't want--” He had only meant to check that he was alive. Nothing else--and hadn’t he promised himself he would cease this? He wanted nothing else.

“Yuuri.” Viktor rubbed at his eyes again with the heel of his palm. “Truly. I don't mind.”

 _No_. What would happen if he dreamt again, and Viktor was audience to him kicking and thrashing and muttering as he often did when he slept? Was he really going to spend the remainder of the night in Viktor Nikiforov’s _bed?_ No goddamn nightmare on earth could convince him that was a brilliant idea.

His own voice, nights before: I won't accept an offer like that ever again.

Yuuri held Viktor Nikiforov’s gaze for an infinite moment. Then he nodded. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Russian used in the first part of the chapter--revnuyushchiy and zaviduyushchiy--are synonyms for the word jealous, though they have different connotations. The former means jealous as one might be of another's lover--jealous of a person--and the latter means more similarly "covetous," as in jealous of something someone owns. The distinction would be important to Yuuri, and Viktor too. (I do not pretend to be fluent in Russian, however, and this is all simply the product of research, so if someone is a native speaker and would like to correct me I would not object.)
> 
> Basquiat was an American artist known for forcing the art world to begin to recognize nontraditional (and non-white) styles and mediums like graffiti as valid art. He was a genius in many ways and had a really interesting artistic relationship with Andy Warhol, the end of which was eventually somewhat credited to his death by heroin overdose at 27. (More importantly, he was very depressed throughout his entire life, the worst of which was exacerbated by the art and cultural world treating him like shot because he was a black man in their coveted spaces.) "Most (young) kings get their heads cut off" is a direct quote from one of his works, a homage to Charlie Parker, who also died young due to drug complications. Jay-Z has since used the phrase a lot in his work.
> 
> I have a few related links I could also post here, and might soon revisit this chapter to do so, but my computer is dying so I can't manage such a thing now. As always, thank you for reading, kudos, and comments, and I'll try to get my life together enough to update the rest of my fics promptly ( :/ ).
> 
> xx


	16. Self Control

Viktor slept poorly and infrequently, a fact he contributed only partially to the forfeiture of his bed for the night. Yuuri’s presence weighed more heavily on his mind, filled the entire room with the suffocating knowledge that Viktor was not safe and not alone, and he found this most unbearable of all.

When he slept, it was fitfully, in the briefest lapses of time, and his dreams were disturbed by an incarnation of Katsuki Yuuri who boasted bloody palms and a hard, icy gaze. Viktor woke often in the night, and often when he did he found that he was afraid.

When awake, he turned his face and did his best to catch a glimpse of the bed without rising from the chaise. Yuuri appeared soundly asleep and softer for the fact, chin tucked downward into his chest, palms firmly against the sheets, glasses cast on the mirroring side of the bed rather than Viktor’s nightstand. He remained dressed, most noticeably in a dark sweater Viktor had bought him once in Minsk which pulled now slightly across his shoulders. Most of his informal clothing had been gifts, six years ago; in Minako’s employment, Yuuri once confided in him, he either wore Japanese suits or very little clothing at all.

The sweater in question had been expensive, but far from the exorbitant sum of money Viktor would have willingly spent on Katsuki Yuuri, then. It had caught his eye because it was blue, and Yuuri looked best in blue when circumstance dictated that he had to wear anything at all. He had also looked at it quietly, like he wanted it but would never say so, and immediately Viktor had bought it without question. He had been twenty-four, and such was the way he filled Yuuri’s sparse side of the closet with soft, expensive things a man who had dressed in elegance only out of grim necessity would previously never have worn.

Of course, it was unlikely Yuuri would remember this. It was unlikely he even remembered where the sweater had come from. Viktor tended to romanticize that which others found entirely inconsequential--a generally endearing habit except in his particular line of work. In the crime business, things like remembering the origins of certain midnight-colored sweaters worn by an old lover would earn him a reputation most would describe as _soft,_ and even more denote as _fatal_.

Yuuri was a light sleeper. Viktor did not sit up to watch his fingers twitch against his throat; rather he imagined it in perfect detail.

* * *

 

When Yuuri dreamed again, it was of Hasetsu.

He stood at the edge of one of the springs, his collar buttoned to his throat. He could not bathe in an onsen anymore, regardless of whether he still stood to inherit the property or not. One could not enter the water with tattoos, and he would not smear his parents’ reputation further by breaking such a rule.

Light footsteps behind, then beside him. Katsuki Mari said, “She wants to speak with you.”

“Mm.” Steam swirled in the cold air. It was winter, and Yuuri’s hands were cold. “Does she really?”

Mari looked out over the water. She did not spare him a glance. “Somehow. Clearly didn't follow my advice.”

Yuuri allowed himself a small, rueful smile. “Which was?”

“Kick you out.” Now she looked at him, and though it hurt to do so, Yuuri held her gaze. “Call the police. Make sure you never came back.”

Yuuri said, “Mari…”

“No.” His elder sister stepped back. “You don't get to explain yourself. At least, not to me.” Something broke in her voice, and Yuuri realized it was a sob. He couldn't remember if he had ever made his sister cry. She was marble, steel, impenetrable and unbreakable. The Katsuki children were alike in this way.

Quietly, Mari said, “It would have been better if he killed you.”

“I’m sorry.” He was. He also knew how trite it sounded. He had spent months rejecting apologies in exponentially sincerer terms than this. The words meant nothing to his sister, as they had meant nothing to him. “I can’t rectify this. I know. But I’m sorry.”

“Whatever.” Mari waved the words away with a painstakingly flippant hand gesture, then turned out to the spring again and lit a cigarette. She closed her eyes and appeared to take a few moments to compose herself. “I only care because they do. You’re still their son.”

The implication that she may no longer consider him her brother hung for several moments between them. Yuuri felt as if a crucial part of him was empty, but also peculiarly serene. This was to be expected, after all. He and Mari were two sides of the same coin, viciously similar even though their paths had diverged so much when Yuuri was young. She was no less forgiving than he.

Still.

“It's going to kill them,” Yuuri murmured. “Losing all of this.”

Katsuki Mari looked at him, and abruptly, she laughed. “Yuuri,” she said, fiercely from between her teeth. “Nothing you’ve done in the last ten years has managed to kill them. You’re even stupider than I know if you believe losing this would kill them.” A long draw on her cigarette, and when Yuuri blinked the ember’s orange glow was imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. “I think the only thing that could kill them is if you walked in there and shot them yourself. And you’re too much of a coward for that.”

Numbly, Yuuri nodded. Silence stretched agonizingly between them. Yuuri watched his sister became a darker silhouette beside him until she and the onsen faded into nothing. When he woke, his face was inexplicably damp.

Wiping hastily at his cheeks, he sat up in bed and blinked widely at his surroundings. He was not in his own bed, nor his own bedroom. At a distance from the bed, as if hesitant to venture any closer but curious to see Yuuri fall to pieces, was a man’s silhouette.

_Fuck_. Yuuri pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “I’m sorry,” and Yuuri waved him away. He was losing his edge, and his mind. How had he thought this was a bright idea? Sleeping in Nikiforov’s bed? There was no feasible lie, no possible excuse for this.

Quietly, Viktor Nikiforov said, “You didn’t wake me. If you were wondering.” As if Yuuri had such trite, altruistic things about which to wonder. “I was up.”

Yuuri shook his head, swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Standing made his head spin. “I’m going to leave.”

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he saw now how Viktor’s fingers worked quickly and nervously at his throat. Small comfort, knowing his uneasiness, but ultimately meaningless to Yuuri.

“You don't have to. It’s almost dawn.”

“I know that.” Yuuri snatched his glasses from the mattress and put them on. “Which is why I’m leaving now.”

He started briskly to the door, then halted and spun around when he sensed movement behind him. Viktor had followed him those final steps, had his arm extended tentatively at if he had been just about to brush Yuuri’s shoulder with his fingers. “Do _not_ touch me,” Yuuri snarled, and Viktor withdrew his hand. Cleared his throat.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.” He looked at his fingers as if they were foreign objects. “I know that.” A pause, so drawn and heavy it made Yuuri ache. “Will you ever tell me what you dream about?”

Yuuri’s hands, slick with warm, flowing red. Katsuki Mari, lying alone between Yuuri’s cold sheets. Viktor Nikiforov’s head lolling gently in his lap, and sometimes he was asleep and sometimes he was dead. Yuuri bleeding, bleeding, bleeding, he was never going to stop _bleeding_. An empty cathedral, where someone had just been married.

“No,” he whispered, and he looked at him too earnestly. “No, I won't.”

“I could guess,” Viktor said, softly, and Yuuri did not sneer. He tipped his chin upward and held it there.

“You won’t,” he said, quiet yet still firm, and Viktor shook his head.

“I won't.” He brought his hand upward again and this time Yuuri did not object when he cupped his jaw, massaged a thumb over the wild pulse in his throat, made him look him in the face until Yuuri could take it no more and closed his eyes.

This was not how things were supposed to go. This was not how the game was meant to be played, this was not how it was supposed to end. For god’s sake, Viktor Nikiforov had tried to _kill_ him, and Yuuri--

Yuuri was in love with him. Still.

He reacted to this self-revelation as one might expect, tearing his jaw from Viktor’s grip, shaking his head, backing up frantically until his shoulders met the door and he could scramble blindly for the handle because he needed to leave he needed to escape he couldn't be here any longer or he would confess everything, Fuchū and Yuko and _everything--_

Viktor Nikiforov expressed something in hurt surprise and Yuuri did not care, the atmosphere of the hallway was colder than he remembered and Yuuri did not care, he turned on his heel and stalked away as if he was enraged rather than terrified and when Viktor Nikiforov said his name Yuuri _did not care_.

His face, his jaw, the corner of his throat where beat his frantic pulse burned with something like shame.

In his bedroom, Yuuri slammed his fist once, twice, three times against the inside of the door, until the expensive wood splintered and his hand flared red where he would surely bruise and he said, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck.”_ Which was a rather eloquent summation of the matter.

He was an idiot. He loved Viktor Nikiforov, still. After all this--perhaps _because_ of a measure of it, since Yuuri was indeed proving himself to be horribly masochistic--he still came to pieces when Viktor touched him. Katsuki Yuuri wasn't sure he was yet capable of what love was, and yet he knew this like he knew he was going to die in less than seven months: he felt that helpless need stir in his chest for Viktor Nikiforov, and it was going to _ruin_ him. Like it had years ago. There were vicious cycles to these things.

“Oh,” he whispered, when the feeling returned to his fingers and he finally allowed himself one strangled sob. He was going to die and the Okukawas, the Plisetskys, and the entire rest of the world would remember him as the irredeemable fool he was. “Oh. God.”

And such passed the end of the Katsuki era, as quickly as it had come. Viktor Nikiforov would have been ecstatic to know it.

* * *

 

“Viktor.” Yuri was dressed well; he and Altin had been invited (read: ordered, and how Yuri resented it) to supper at the Nikiforov estate. His collar was tight, and his cheeks were possibly a bit pink from the wine he’d drank too fast and in too copious amounts. He was angry, and it showed, but he was presently being quite civil. Katsuki would have been proud.

“Hm?” He was too nonchalant, too quietly pleased for this. Yuri resented him too.

_He knew._ Yuri kept telling himself so, and it did well to keep him angry.

“I want to talk. About Nikolai.”

Katsuki was out of the house, on one of those mysterious moody pilgrimages he often took which Viktor was too stupid to question. The two of them were alone in the room, and the setting sun bathed the room in morbid light through the red Wright glass.

Yuri held his breath so he would not fidget.

“Nikolai,” Viktor said, quietly, and he did not turn from the window. He had his head tipped back, his eyes closed, and his voice was a gentle murmur. The air in the room was drowsily warm. “Why Nikolai?”

Yuri said, firmly, “You know how he died.”

“Mm. Yes.”

Rage swelled in him then, though he had _known_ it, and Yuri’s hands curled into fists. He kept his tone measured. Anger was useless if it was not checked--Katsuki Yuuri had taught him that.

He said, “You’ve always pretended you hadn't.” Silly--childish even--of him to point this out. As if calling him on his deception would inspire guilt of any sort in Viktor Nikiforov. The man had no conscience which extended a centimeter past his own desires. “I want you to tell me how it happened.”

“No, you don't.” Softly. He had opened his eyes. When Yuri stepped around to look at him in profile, he saw that Viktor’s pupils were dilated in the glare of the sun, and there was a gentle twist to his mouth.

_Was he mocking him?_ Wordlessly, Yuri snarled.

“Yes,” Yuri said then, and his voice bled with the same ice Katsuki’s often did, and he saw how the perfect mimicry made Viktor start. Made him look at him, finally, like a thing worth attention. “I do.”

“Who set you up to this?” His gaze was searching. Calculating, too. There was no room for grief, nor guilt. “Was it Popovich? I’m sure. He’s always had such a goddamn bleeding heart.”

Admitting to having had assistance gave Yuri pause. He had no qualms about stepping on Babicheva’s face to get what he wanted; he only feared Viktor Nikiforov somehow thinking less of Yuri for needing a tip-off. But it was painfully obvious now that the rumors were, had always been, true. And this truth was more important than his pride.

Sullenly, he spat, “Why does it matter?” and finally Viktor looked at him.

“Because I want to know,” he said, dangerously soft. “I’ll trade you that information for what happened to Nikolai.”

And part of Yuri thought perhaps this was a trick, perhaps he was losing something here by giving up his confidante, but the deal was promising. He said, “Mila,” and Viktor nodded. Then he strode to the sofa and sat down.

“How old were you when Nikolai died, Yura?”

Yuri did not for a moment take his eyes off of Viktor’s face. He said, “Eight.”

Viktor said, “I was twenty-one. Do you remember what he was like, when he was alive?”

“Yes.” Indignant. Of course he remembered. Pieces. Fragments. Not whole memories, but close enough.

“Do you?” Viktor dipped his head, and that gentle turn to his mouth was back. Yuri did not care for it. “When I was seventeen, he threatened to kill my dog. You were too young to remember that, I’m sure.”

Yuri Plisetsky did not remember that. Something in his chest began to pull, and he scowled to mask the discomfort. “Just tell me,” he said, more quietly than he meant to. “Please.”

But Viktor didn’t. His gaze was somewhere above Yuri’s head. “When I was younger than you, he brought in people for me to hurt. That was how he built his heirs--he did it to me, he did it to Chris, to Mila even though she was younger than us all. He tried it with Georgi and nearly killed him when he couldn't get him to break a few bones. He did it to you too, when you were seven. Do you remember that?”

What was he getting at? Yuri Plisetsky narrowed his eyes. “No.”

“I made Yakov put a stop to it. Temporarily.” He brought a hand to his face and pressed it to his right temple. “Nikolai didn't appreciate that.”

“Please.” He hasn't meant to say it a second time. Viktor looked at him and tilted his head to the side.

“Yuri,” he said, and it was strange to hear him call him anything but Yura. As much as Yuri resented the diminutive, resented having been awarded the nickname as soon as it was no longer appropriate to use in reference to Katsuki Yuuri anymore, he had grown used to it. _Yuri_ was too serious. _Yuri_ meant something. “How do you think he died?”

The anger that had lied dormant in his chest since dinner flared again, and Yuri felt his throat warm and his mouth twist when he said accusingly, “Yakov had him killed. You knew about it, and you pretended you didn’t.”

Curious, Viktor frowned. “So this is a problem you have with Yakov?”

“No.” Was it not painfully obvious that his problem was with Viktor? Had he not made this sentiment impossible to miss?

“I mean.” Viktor shrugged. He was so goddamn _casual_. And yet he was fooling no one. “You’re right. But you must know somewhere, if your issue is with me, who it was Yakov put up to the job, Yuri.”

And Yuri did not understand, and then he did. He stood very still, and then he felt as if his legs might go out from under him. “You,” he whispered, and of _course_ , of course it made sense, it had always made sense, Yuri had simply never wanted to acknowledge that it did because it _hurt_. He hated that Viktor Nikiforov was going to make him cry.

“I’m not sorry I did it,” Viktor said quietly. “But I am sorry you know.”

Yuri found his voice: “Fuck you.”

“Yura.” He was up and striding to him, and Yuri wanted to move, step out of his way, but he couldn't find the will. When he gripped him by the shoulders, his hold suddenly became the sole force keeping Yuri from sliding to the floor. “He knew what he was creating. If it wasn't me then, it would have been you later. That’s the truth.”

_“Fuck_ you.” He was crying, finally. Viktor Nikiforov politely overlooked this. “You can't--can’t justify something like--”

“Of course I can.” Viktor’s grip on his shoulders was a vise. Yuri did not know whether the force was intentional or not. “That’s what he taught me to do.”

“Fuck you--”

“Yura.” He frowned, as if this grief was untranslatable to him. Perhaps it was. Yuri had seen Viktor Nikiforov grieve, and it was not like this. Viktor grieved much more violently. “You’re going to mourn him?”

And Yuri _hated_ him, so much he found the strength to keep himself upright and wretch himself from his grip and draw a hand back and across his face in one fluid, damning motion. Viktor had been crouching, to better match Yuri’s height, and the sound of skin against cool skin was earth-moving.

He flinched a bit, and then stood to his full height and Yuri caught a glimpse of the blood spotting his lower lip, where he must have bitten the skin in his incredulity. Red bloomed too on his cheek, and Yuri rode the vicious high of leaving a mark on such a man as far as it would take him.

“You're _really_ fucking bold for some adopted bastard,” Yuri snarled, his hand still held sharp at the edge of his own cheek. “You don't deserve what you have--you never have. You’re no better than any of the rest of the fucking help, and you don't--deserve-- _this.”_

“Really.” His tone was mild. Yuri paid it no mind.

He said, in a voice so finely enraged it was almost sweet, “I am going to fucking take it from you, Viktor. All of it.”

“You’re welcome to it,” Viktor said, quietly enough he might have been amused. “Truthfully, I’ve grown tired of it all.”

But Yuri had already swept from the room, because the tears had returned and he could not let such a man--who had for many years been as an older brother, a parent, a poster child for what Yuri could not and would not become--see him cry again.

* * *

“Oh, _god.”_ Yuuri’s tie and his belt were missing, the latter tossed carelessly over some armchair or another in the library, Viktor’s study, wherever they had been minutes before. Yuuri couldn't remember. (The former was wound around his wrists behind his back, and it was a wonderful, virtuous thing to crease the silk in this manner. Viktor had promised him so.) Katsuki Yuuri’s tongue was thick with foreign words which could not hope to express what he meant. _“Fuck.”_

Viktor Nikiforov’s face before his: his nose bumping gently against Yuuri’s, his lips meeting his but in a lopsided, nonsymmetrical way, so that he was not quite kissing him and for Yuuri to attempt to make him would out Yuuri as an obvious fool of passion. Viktor laughed with his lips closed, and it sounded like a twice-satisfied hum. “Is that so?”

Then Yuuri could not take the proximity, turning his head abruptly so the sharp parts of his face knocked against those of Viktor’s face, and the latter opened his mouth in reflexive surprise and Yuuri caught his loose bottom lip in his teeth. Viktor Nikiforov gasped, and the sound made Yuuri shake, or perhaps that was due more so to his hands. Viktor had wonderful hands. He certainly knew what to do with them.

“Fuck,” Yuuri whispered into his mouth, teeth knocking for a bright painful moment against hard bone, and Viktor laughed again. “Fuck. _Viktor.”_

“Mm,” Viktor agreed, threading his free hand through Yuuri’s hair so he had a handhold by which to yank his head upwards and backwards. The air left Yuuri’s lungs in a rush, and the sensation in its wake was heady, intoxicating. Coherent thought was both impossible and unnecessary. Viktor’s hands rendered all other possible areas of thought insubstantial. There was nothing but _this_ , would be nothing after this, and there had been nothing before.

“God,” Yuuri breathed, and his eyes were on the high ceiling as Viktor’s mouth fled his throat, as the shiver which ran upward from the base of his spine and back down again made his eyes wide wide wide, as Viktor murmured, “I suppose we are near enough to god,” into his shoulder. There was divinity to it, undeniably. There always was.

Viktor’s right hand, which was now fisted in support at the base of Yuuri’s skull, uncurled to grasp in unspecified want at pieces of his dark hair. Yuuri’s chest rose and fell violently, and his eyes closed when he gasped, “Are we?” and Viktor Nikiforov laughed.

“If not,” he murmured, and finally Yuuri flung back his head and shook and sighed and did his best to climb out of his goddamn skin, “what could we be?”

“Men,” Yuuri whispered then, after an extended pause during which Viktor’s fingers wound softly through his hair. Yuuri slouched forward into him as Viktor unbound the silk from his wrists. “Mortal men. That’s all.”

“Mm,” Viktor said, as if he could not agree, and his hand cupped the back of Yuuri’s head when the latter pushed his face into Viktor’s shoulder tiredly. “I refuse to believe you are not more special than that.”

“Flattery,” Yuuri murmured, but he was content. The edges of Viktor’s fingers traced pretty, tantalizing patterns over his scalp. He was going to be twenty-three forever. The ring on his hand told him so.

“Not if it's true,” Viktor reminded him playfully. He kissed Yuuri so hard he melted, so hard when he woke he wondered why Viktor Nikiforov’s hands were not tangled in his hair and why Yuuri’s bed was as cold as if it had been lonely all night.

* * *

 

Viktor was awake when the insistent rapping on his door came, as if he had been expecting it. Truthfully, he had come to expect it in these weeks, a fact which was only more pathetic when one considered that the nightly pilgrimages would inevitably stop and Viktor would be left insomniac over the hope of a midnight visitor for the rest of his life.

Sliding from his carefully folded position in the center if his unmade bed (one had to perpetuate the illusion of sleep, though Yuuri’s nightmares seemed hellbent on infecting Viktor’s own nights as well now), he opened the door.

“Yuuri,” he said, in surprise, for something about Katsuki Yuuri in that moment was wild and Viktor had not the chance to ask _what’s wrong_ before Katsuki Yuuri caught him by the front of the collar and yanked his mouth to meet his own.

Something white-hot rushed to meet the surprise in his chest and devastating, thoughtless need filled him then. Suddenly, rather without knowing he was doing so, Viktor was kissing back--without regard for his own safety or consequence--and he _loved_ it. Desire shot through him like a physical thrill; his only coherent thought as he placed his hands on either side of Yuuri’s face and tilted his head and sweetened the kiss with the ragged caress of his thumbs on Yuuri’s cheeks was _Yuuri_ , again and again and again.

_Yuuri. Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri._ He had wanted this for so long, had just finally begun to accept that it would not happen ever again, and here he was! On his doorstep, in his arms, carding his hands through Viktor’s hair as if he could not touch him enough. Surely this was _proof_.

“Mm.” Then Viktor stumbled a bit, made as if to withdraw his hands. Brief pain had made him flinch, tear his mouth from Yuuri’s and find it salted with blood. Yuuri had bitten him, hard. “Yuuri. I--”

“Shut up,” Yuuri snarled, stepping over the threshold and taking him roughly by the shoulder, pushing him against the now-closed door and kissing him again. Viktor let him do it without protest. The hatred apparent in his expression, in the roughness of his voice, should have shattered the naive illusion which possessed Viktor Nikiforov. Instead, it only made every aspect of the current exchange more hypnotic. “No talking.”

And Viktor could do that. He didn't need to talk with a second tongue in his mouth, didn't need to talk with this to distract him. Every nerve ending in his body was electric, and when Yuuri pressed his legs, his chest, body for body against Viktor’s so he could fist his hand more tightly in his hair, Viktor felt as if every synapse in his body went off at once. The sound he made against Yuuri’s mouth was embarrassingly honest.

Helplessly, he brought his trembling hands to Yuuri’s face again, let them brush softly against his cheeks, explore with innocent, rapt curiosity the growing uncut state of his hair, slip his fingers beneath his collar--

Yuuri did not pull away, and yet his fingers unwound quickly from Viktor’s hair and he had Viktor’s own hands by the wrists when he pinned them roughly to the wood behind his head. He was not gentle, not soft, when he snapped, “Do not _touch,”_ against the side of Viktor’s mouth.

Ruined, rapturous, Viktor Nikiforov nodded. And he did not touch.

He let Yuuri have his way in everything: let him keep his wrists pinned to the door beside Viktor’s face, so close he could see his fingers twitch of their own accord every time Yuuri made him whine and Viktor failed to swallow the sound, let Yuuri relieve of him all clothing upwards of the waist and then pull him to Viktor’s unmade bed. He stayed silent, except when he at last could not.

“Yuuri,” he said, quietly but quickly, lest Yuuri think this was mindless flouting of his aforementioned rules. “Are you sure--”

“Don't talk.” The following kiss was hungry, an action of the starving, and though his thoughts were hazy Viktor worried again. He would not do this unless all of Yuuri wanted it. Such a transgression against the long-standing rules between them would be disastrous.

He whispered, “Yuuri.” Sudden lucidity possessed him: _Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? I need to know._ Viktor wanted this, so so badly.

Then he said, “You’re beautiful.”

_Coward_.

Yuuri frowned from where he sat back on his heels, thighs pressed to either side of Viktor’s waist, and when he leaned forward gently and laid the palm of his hand lengthwise across Viktor’s mouth, then his thumb over his nose, it took extreme concentration for Viktor to remain still. His heart was wild in his chest.

“Do you still think,” Yuuri said slowly, quietly, “that I care whether you think so, Viktor Nikiforov?” He smiled, and it was sharp, and Viktor couldn’t breathe but _oh god_ he would have let him kill him right then. It would have been the best, most blissful way to die.

Cruelly, with his hand still firmly over both his airways, Yuuri: “No, I do want to know. Tell me. Without words.”

Carefully, Viktor did not blink. He shook his head.

Only then did Katsuki Yuuri peel his hand from his mouth. He appeared satisfied with Viktor’s involuntary gasp for oxygen, the flush to his cheeks, and again he smiled.

Viktor murmured, _“Please…”_ and he meant it. _“I want--”_ And he meant it. Yuuri bent his head, took his throat between his teeth, and when Viktor gasped and shook and finally whispered his name again and again, breaking the cardinal of Yuuri’s two rules, he _meant_ it.

* * *

 

Yuuri woke while the room was still dark, because someone was pounding on the bedroom door out in the hall.

This might have inspired panic, at any other time. But it was hardly three in the morning, and he had just had some very satisfying--if ultimately damning--sex, and Katsuki Yuuri was nothing but very, very sleepy. He watched the yellow light and shifting shadows bleeding beneath the door with one open eye and resolved to do nothing.

“Viktor. Viktor!” Georgi Popovich, which was surprising. Someone had let him into the house. Either that, or he had broken in--which was not at all an unlikely possibility, because it was Georgi. “For _fuck’s_ sake, Viktor. Open the goddamn door!”

“Mm. You’re wanted.” Beside him, Viktor did not move. Half-asleep, Yuuri contemplated giving him a shove off the bed to motivate him. Decided that this, too, was more effort than he was willing to expend.

Georgi persisted. “Viktor _fucking_ Nikiforov. If you’re dead in there over some mess of drugs, Feltsman is going to blame _me--”_

“Can't you shut him up?” Yuuri snarled finally, splaying his fingers over the upper portion of his face. He had a quick temper when matters would prevent him from his well-deserved sleep.

“Mm,” came the noncommittal reply. Viktor’s face was turned away from Yuuri, and Yuuri again thought to give him a rather hard shove.

“Viktor, please.” Georgi pounded on the door. “It’s Yuri.”

Bated silence. Yuuri went still; beside him, Viktor lifted his head from the pillow. The realization of what they had done, who was to find out, the _consequences_ Yuuri was going to face here because of Georgi fucking Popovich of _all people,_ finally settled in the atmosphere.

“Plisetsky,” Georgi added, sounding a bit winded. “Plisetsky’s gone. Come _on_ , you fucking asshole--I’m going to pick your lock, and you better be wearing clothes--”

He was, in fact, not wearing clothes. Lowly, Yuuri spat, “Fucking _hell,”_ and got out of bed.

Relative quiet outside the door, as Georgi presumably picked the lock on Viktor’s bedroom door. Yuuri unlocked it and swung it inward before he finished the job.

_“Finally--_ Jesus Christ.”

Yuuri checked his cuticles. “Hmm. No.”

Shrill as he was, Georgi was no coward. He peered around Yuuri to catch a glimpse of Viktor and said, “Jesus. Is he dead? Did you kill him?”

“If only.” Perhaps that was too bold of him. Behind him, Viktor did not protest. Yuuri had cast a furtive glance at his face in the dark, before opening the door, and he hadn’t looked conscious enough to protest then. Even now, his expression was still heavy with the trappings of sleep and clinging sex, and something like satisfaction took up residence in Katsuki Yuuri’s chest.

Georgi looked like he was having too much difficulty remembering how to close his mouth to react to that minor statement of treason. Yuuri prompted, “You wanted something, Georgi.”

“I--yes.” He corrected his posture, frowned professionally. “Plisetsky’s gone from both estates. Altin is not with him.”

“Mm.” Yuuri tapped his own throat contemplatively. “Who knows?”

“Me. Yakov, Lilia, Chris, Mila. Viktor, now.” A tilt of his head, something which may have been narrowing of his eyes. “You.”

A scowl, a scornful laugh. “This isn't _my_ doing, Popovich.”

Georg looked at him, at the wrinkled state of his clothes, and at Viktor, who had lifted his head from the bed and supported it with one hand poised beneath his chin. “I don't know what to think, now.” Yuuri sneered.

“Then don't think.” Not Yuuri speaking. They were the first words Viktor had said since he had whispered Yuuri’s name with feverish reverence hours before. The cadence of his Russian was more rough now than usual. Yuuri tilted back his head and closed his eyes. “Do your job, and follow orders.”

Georgi nodded once. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. What would you like me to do?”

“Bring Altin to me. Where is Mila?”

“She’s out looking, sir. Viktor.”

“Then call Chris instead. Yuuri--”

Quickly, before he could dare give him orders. “I’m going to look for him.”

“That’s not--”

Yuuri raised his palm. “I know you don't presume to tell _me_ what to do, Viktor Nikiforov.”

A pause. A tinge of defeat. Viktor said, “Of course not.”

Georgi Popovich said, “Christ.”

Yuuri smiled. He had taken a considerable blow here, letting Popovich know he had spent the night in Viktor’s bedroom. There was no argument against that damning display of attachment, nor against what had undoubtedly transpired behind closed doors. But it was not the greatest possible loss. There were still appearances to be had, and still illusions of control to be cast. Yuuri could wear that mask for any audience; Popovich was nowhere near his toughest crowd.

Without looking at Viktor, he said, “I’ll call you. When I find him.” He waited for Georgi to step aside, and then he left the two of them blinking at one another as he detoured to his own bedroom and retrieved a coat and the keys to the Fisker.

The Camaro was absent from its usual space in the garage, which was a bad sign. The Fisker was safe in its spot, as he had figured; Yuuri knew Plisetsky would never willingly take the Fisker anywhere, even if his life depended on it.

When he had left Nevsky, he called Mila Babicheva.

“He took Viktor’s car,” he said, in lieu of greeting, and the younger woman swore.

“He’s going to kill me,” she spat over the line, and Yuuri found this strain of conversation rather disinteresting.

“Not my problem,” he said boredly, and then he hung up.

He checked Vladimirsky before he left for Petrograd side and found nothing. He hadn’t expected to, but he liked to cover all his bases.

He did find him on Petrograd. Or rather, he found the car.

The Camaro had been thoroughly smashed, presumably against a street lamp--or several. The damage to the hood was irrevocable, and the entire front fender looked as if it had been chewed up by something much bigger and more formidable than a 1969 Chevy Camaro. The front windshield was smashed. There was no dead Russian teenager in the driver’s side.

Again, Yuuri called Babicheva. “I found what's left of the car.”

“Fuck!” Eloquent of her. Yuuri hung up again.

Two blocks from where the Camaro had been left to smolder in an empty lot was a bar. It was three in the morning, and Yuuri entered it with his sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

“We're closing in an hour,” said the bartender brusquely, his back to the door. “Would advise you to go home.”

Yuuri dropped a stack of rubles on the bar and said, “The Plisetsky family advises differently.”

Sudden alertness in the set of the man’s shoulders. “My apologies, sir. What can I help you with?”

Yuuri waved a hand dismissively. He had found what he needed.

He slid into the booth gracefully, pulling the bottle of what appeared to have once been new, unopened vodka away from its proximity to Yuri Plisetsky. “This is expensive,” he said mildly, and Yuri looked at him with one hand jammed beneath his chin.

“Not as expensive at the ZL1 I just totaled,” he said, sounding more than sullen and less than sober. He appeared to be having difficulty keeping his eyes open, or his tongue sharp.

“No,” Yuuri agreed. “Not quite.”

Silence exchanged itself between them and then Plisetsky said, “He killed my grandfather.” Narrow, accusing gaze. “But you already knew that.”

“I did.” There was no point in lying. Judging by the ratio of empty glass to vodka in the bottle, it was unlikely Yuri Plisetsky would remember this exchange anyway. He was too young for this kind of thing. “He told me years ago.”

“And not _me?”_ Suddenly, he sounded close to tears. Katsuki Yuuri pressed his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes.

“Well. Look at how well you reacted to it now,” he pointed out in exasperation, and Plisetsky scowled.

“Don't make this my fault. This isn't my fault.”

“The dead father figure?” Yuuri drawled. “Or the drinking?”

_“Fuck--”_

“Watch your mouth when you speak to me.” Sharp as it was, it gave Plisetsky pause. “The former, of course, is not your fault. How you handle it is.” This was a tenant of Yuuri’s own outlook on life. It was high time Plisetsky learned it too.

“Did he send you after me?” Yuri toyed with the glass in front of him, seeming to forget it was empty. “To come _fetch_ me?”

Coolly: “I do not take Viktor Nikiforov’s orders.”

Yuri Plisetsky smiled, and something in it reminded Yuuri of himself. “Of course you do. You just pretend they’re your own.”

“Yuri.” A warning. Katsuki Yuuri would not accept goading in the name of bringing Viktor’s heir home unscathed. He was not selfless.

Yuri Plisetsky blinked, and his head fell a short distance to the table before he caught himself. His gaze was sleepy, and gently distressed. “M’sorry. I didn't mean…” Tilted his face backward, and his head lolled. “He’s going to kill me, isn't he? For the Camaro.”

“No.” Yuuri capped the vodka and kept it without Plisetsky’s reach. “Believe it or not, you are much more important to him than that Camaro.”

Yuri laughed, a short disbelieving sound. He said, “I hate him,” and sounded as if he meant it.

Katsuki Yuuri said, “It would be fine if you did.”

“I _do.”_

“Mm. But you don’t.”

Anger flashed in his expression, and he gestured sloppily with his right hand. “Who are you...to say? You don’t...you couldn’t know…”

Yuuri smiled. It was mostly kind. “I know what it looks like to hate Viktor Nikiforov, and I know that you would be justified--entirely--if you did decide you hated him for what he has done. But I can see it in you that you don't.” A shrug. “You worship him too much for that.”

Plisetsky sneered. “Pots and kettles.”

“My situation is bit of a different matter.” But he said it levelly, as if discussion of the hatred (or the absence thereof) of Viktor Nikiforov did not upset him in the slightest. As if it was a charming topic of dissertation. “But I suppose you could pass that judgement, if you wanted.”

Yuri rolled his eyes. The simple action appeared to nauseate him. After a pause, he ventured, “Viktor said he told him once that he would kill his dog. Is that…”

“True?” Yuuri shrugged. “I didn't know Viktor when he was seventeen. I imagine it is. Minako knew your grandfather, then, and he never seemed a man partial to either dogs or kindness.”

“And he made him hurt people. When he was a kid.” It was not a question.

“Viktor did not become the man he is now through kindness, Yuri Plisetsky.” Yuuri folded his hands before himself. “He is a product of violent teaching. So I am, but I would argue him more so. Minako never threatened to kill my dog.”

“I--” Plisetsky let his head fall into his hands. “I don't think I want to do this.”

Yuuri tilted his head. Let him continue on his own time, which he soon did.

“I don't--I don't think I can. Do this kind of thing.” He spread his hands. When he met Yuuri’s gaze, he looked fairly miserable. “I don't think I can make a living hurting people.”

“Selfless of you,” Yuuri said, though his tone was carefully devoid of both judgement and panic. “Have you told anyone this?”

Yuri Plisetsky laughed harshly. “Do you think I would still be _around_ if I had told anyone that?” His words were slurring more listlessly into one another now. Yuuri briefly considered the odds of him having to carry Plisetsky back to the Fisker. “The only reason he bothers with keeping me alive is because he needs a _successor.”_

“Hm.” Expressing his doubt on the matter would hardly do much to sway Plisetsky’s conviction on the subject. Instead, Yuuri simply frowned.

He said, “Why didn’t you bring Altin with you when you left?” Yuri Plisetsky cut his eyes at him.

“Otabek doesn't drink,” he said, as if this was simply the most logical thing. Yuuri tilted his head, pleading elaboration. “And I didn’t want--” A new trembling to his hands, to his voice. “And I didn't want to get him in trouble.”

_Trouble_. It was such a childish thing to say. Yuuri himself had said it before, about Yuko. _I don't want to get you in trouble._

“Hm,” Yuuri said. He did not express his thought that leaving Otabek Altin asleep in the estate, implying that he was now slacking on his conviction to die for the Plisetsky heir, if needed, had probably done him more harm than good.

Instead, he said, “When I first killed someone, I was seventeen.”

“What the fuck.” The blandly incredulous statement almost made Yuuri smile, somehow. “Why--why would you--”

“I tell you that because I know you do not have a very flattering perception of me, Yuri Plisetsky. And I don't care if you do,” he added, at some floundering attempt on his company’s part to deny the allegation. “My job is not to impress Russian teenagers.”

“Anymore.” The single word was cutting, and Plisetsky seemed to realize his error as soon as he made it. Katsuki Yuuri only smiled, sharply.

“Anymore.” Though Viktor had been twenty-three, nowhere near as young as Yuri Plisetsky. Almost as stupid, however. “I tell you that because the decision to kill someone, Yuri Plisetsky, is not something half-hearted. It was not when I was seventeen, and it was not when Viktor Nikiforov was twenty-one. Nor when he was twenty-six. If you doubt you can carry on the family business, that is something you _tell_ _someone.”_

“I--”

“We do not make our own decisions, in this line of work.” Yuuri stood, grabbed his coat and his keys. “We are not our own masters, and if you think one day you might object to putting down Viktor Nikiforov, or Yakov Feltsman, or--fuck if I know-- _Otabek Altin,_ then I suggest you do not pursue the family career. I only clean up the first few messes each of you makes.” Briefly, he closed his eyes. “Then no more favors, and you're on your own.”

“Is that what you told Viktor?” The question made him pause. Nearly made him flinch. Yuri Plisetsky blinked up at him with a suddenly sober demeanor. “In Barcelona?”

Surgically, from between sharp, clenched teeth: “I told Viktor Nikiforov I would die for him, in Barcelona, and I did. That was the last of his favors.”

There was a period of short silence. “Are you going to kill him?” Yuri asked in a hushed whisper. It did nothing to clarify his tipsy diction.

“Of course not,” Katsuki Yuuri said, and he shook his head as if to dispel a dream. _Are you going to kill him?_ He didn't know, anymore. Everyday the option seems somehow both more and less appealing. He ought to figure that out, sooner rather than later. “Can you stand?”

“Yes.” An attempt to prove this ended in stumbling failure. Yuuri sighed, then gripped him by the arm and lifted Plisetsky to his feet. “Thanks,” he muttered, and at least he sounded rightfully embarrassed. Yuuri was not a babysitter.

Plisetsky fell asleep quickly and quietly in the Fisker. Katsuki Yuuri took this opportunity to call Viktor’s cell.

“I’ve got him,” he said, when Viktor answered with a harsh and barely conciliatory, “Yes?” His grip tightened around the steering wheel. “He totaled your car. I’ll have Mila take care of it.”

_“Fucking_ Christ,” Viktor snapped, and Yuuri tried to smother the thrill in his stomach at Viktor Nikiforov’s anger. There was so much wrong with them, that this would inspire something in him after all Viktor had done. All Yuuri had done, too. (He was decidedly finished with pleading his own innocence in the Plisetsky affair.)

Yuuri carefully distracted himself from the wetness in his mouth by biting hard on the inner flesh of his cheek. The coppery taste of blood grounded him. “It was ugly anyway.”

Viktor said something Yuuri did not catch in blunted, angry Russian away from the receiver. Morbid interest in making Viktor follow as many orders as possible compelled him to say, “Is Altin there? Put him on the phone.”

“I--”

“Now, please.”

Viktor Nikiforov did as told. Yuuri tore the ragged flesh in his mouth and wet his teeth with more blood.

“Yes, sir,” Altin said into the phone. He called him _sir_ now, because he was younger than the rest and not stupid enough to call Yuuri the things the veterans did. Most of them called him simply Katsuki, devoid of any honorifics or denotations of respect, and on occasion, Popovich called him _sir_ (though the lilt to his voice was more gently mocking than reverent). Mila Babicheva called him _motherfucker_ as frequently as she thought Yuuri would allow before he decided to break her fingers.

“Altin,” Yuuri said, simply. “Has he beaten you yet?”

“No, sir.” There was something slick to the words, like blood sliding on the teeth.

“Don’t lie to me for his favor, Altin. Has he beaten you?”

Otabek Altin hesitated. A good soldier. He was made for better things than this business, more things honorable things than the Plisetskys. Though the same had always been said about Yuuri, when he was young. “Not me, sir. I’m fine.”

Yuuri nodded, once. “Thank you, Altin. You can give him back the phone now.”

“Mhm,” Viktor said, when he had been handed back his phone. He was trying valiantly for boredom. Perhaps he was realizing the compromising position into which he had landed himself, since letting Yuuri fuck him with his hand over his mouth hours ago. Bravado seemed to be his remedy of choice.

“Don’t hit him,” Yuuri said flatly, and then tacked on, “Or anyone else.”

“Mhm.” Something seethed beneath the gentle hum.

“Your heir is alive. I want Altin in possession of his teeth when I return, so I can speak with him.”

“Mhmm.”

“You can always buy another Camaro,” Yuuri added, cruelly, a strange compulsion to salt the wound overcoming him. Viktor made a sound which was like teeth clicking together in barely swallowed rage.

“It’s not about the car,” he snapped, terribly, and Yuuri felt the amusement at having drawn irritation from him drain away. He was tired. _Are you going to kill him?_

“I advise that you are not home when I return, Viktor Nikiforov.”

“What?” Incredulity worsened the venom in his voice. Yuuri allowed him the grace of his forgiveness, just this once.

“Leave. Take some time to yourself.” With a fingertip, he traced a brief pattern on his bare throat. “You’ve done enough already, haven't you?”

“I’m not--”

“Viktor.” Gentle, and nearly sincere. Yuuri imagined Viktor sighing inaudibly, leaning loosely against the wall, all the fight leaving him. A burst spot of blood on his knuckles, from when--Yuuri would later discover--he had put his fist through the mirror out of blind rage and immediately regretted it. Altin was just a _kid_. They all had been, once. “It is an order.”

It was not an act of altruism. Katsuki Yuuri needed the estate to himself. He needed silence, unadulterated time to think, to fix. The business with Yuri Plisetsky, with Viktor Nikiforov, with Phichit Chulanont and Nishigori Yuko too. Things were so goddamn complicated, and he couldn't concentrate with the physical manifestation of all his stupid mistakes haunting the estate. He needed Viktor Nikiforov gone.

More privately, Yuuri couldn't shake the memory of his hand over his mouth, Viktor parting his lips with a gentle gasp and taking his fingers between his teeth. Of the woozy, wonderful way Yuuri had tipped back his head and sighed, and how, breathlessly, Viktor had laughed. Of the way he had heeded Yuuri’s rules the entire time, except for when he whispered his name, and except for at the last moment, when he drowsily pressed Yuuri’s palm to his cheek before he fell asleep.

He was _in love_ with him.

Through fucking him, Yuuri had hoped to dispel certain morbid fascinations with the man who had dreamt of killing him. Clearly, it had proved to do the opposite. Katsuki Yuuri was obsessed. And ruinously so.

When he pulled the Fisker into the garage, the white BMW which usually parked beside it was gone. When Yuuri carried a heavily sleeping Plisetsky into the house and placed him in a first floor guest bedroom, so was Viktor Nikiforov.

* * *

 

The church was typically Orthodox: gold on the walls and the altar, Byzantine-era icons stacked up every vertical surface, candles dripping white wax to the floors like they bled with it. Viktor Nikiforov did not know where to stand. It had been several years since he had been to church. Three, actually.

_Leave. Take some time to yourself._ And like a lovesick moron, he had done so willingly.

He picked the remaining pieces of mirror out of his hand and waited for something to happen, some lovely supernatural force to come over him and grant him revelation, redemption, a nap. Nothing did. The room was silent to its highest ceilings.

_Viktor. It is an order._

Lilia used to take him here, when he was a child. Nikolai had insisted upon it, like a man who paid his weekly donations to the church but neglected to come, as if hoping bribery would still grant him the opportunity to have a funeral service under the church’s watchful divine eye when he died. Nobody had believed, in Viktor’s family, but everyone had gone a few times. It was the Russian thing to do.

The pulsing pain in his knuckles made him woozy, or perhaps it was the panic. He contemplated sitting on the floor, like children used to when he had attended services. He had himself, a few times, until the sharpness of Lilia’s nails and the venom on her tongue had convinced him to do otherwise. Everything was about appearances; future mobsters did not sit on the floor in a church and let their heads loll boredly on their shoulders through mass. Nor did they did hold the hands of their caretakers, or lean into her hip when their eyelids turned heavy and incense made them unbearably sleepy. She had gripped his arm between her fingers for that, so tightly Viktor had cried out.

He didn't know why he had come now. Katsuki Yuuri had told him to leave, and this had been the first place he had imagined. Perhaps he was desperate for guidance now, for foolishly believing--even if only for a few moments--that there was a divinity in this space which could forgive him, or tell him what to do.

_When we marry, Yuuri, I want it to be in a place like this._

He was hollow. Blood dripped slowly from his crooked fingers to the floor. The icons (how he had hated them as a child, particularly the one of Xenia, patron saint of the city he would inherit at twenty-one) watched him in the bland, accusing way of most religious iconography, as if he had committed the worst possible crimes and was still undeserving of their full attention.

“Forgive me,” Viktor said aloud--though to himself, the painted saints, or Katsuki Yuuri, he was not certain. “Please forgive me.”

Yet there was no one left, behind the altar or the icons’ gilded frames, to absolve him of anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is shorter than the average chapter i usually write, and also feels vaguely. uninspired. perhaps ive just been staring at it for too long. in any case, things are Finally beginning to move along.
> 
> if anyone is at all interested, the writing playlist ive been using for the last few chapters can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/user/winterowl31/playlist/4mwysVb101IY20Pus2sBuX?si=YOeeT2OxQDmNJ_QJErnHUg   
> The other two parts can also be found, similarly titled, on the same account. 
> 
> as always, thanks for comments and kudos, and feel free to contact me privately on tumblr if the need ever arises!
> 
> xx


	17. Odi et Amo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for description of drug overdose

Katsuki Yuuri was fourteen, and he was falling asleep at the table as his mother poured the tea. There was already something different between them, like a badly-kept secret between two people much too polite to point it out.

He was seventeen, and he was standing on the threshold of his old home, the itch of new ink persistent beneath his collar, and his father was saying, _You can't keep doing this to us, Yuuri. Please._

He was nineteen, and he was at a party selling drugs too high quality for the drunk, wealthy students who would inevitably overdose on them. He was bored, and when a boy stumbled to the corner into which Yuuri was leaning and in slow, drugged English asked to kiss him, Yuuri let him.

He was twenty-one, and he was at a club, and he was very, very high. Viktor Nikiforov did not ask to kiss him before he did so, and Yuuri’s nails left white half-moons in the light flush of his neck. Christophe Giacometti placed a colored tablet on his own tongue and quoted from memory, _If love be rough with you, be rough with love._ Viktor Nikiforov was laughing.

He was twenty-two, and he was dying, and he was awfully, impossibly cold. His throat was raw, like he had just thrown up and yet he couldn't remember it, and he was shivery, but maybe he wasn’t dying anymore. Viktor was holding him, tracing patterns on his face and saying, _You're okay you're okay you're alive--_

He was twenty-three, and he was laughing. The papers proclaimed him Emperor Consort, Shining Prince, a deadly scourge on Saint Petersburg, and everywhere he went people shied away from the sharpness in his mouth. There was a gold ring on his finger. He had never been better.

He was twenty-four, and he was not dying, but he wanted to be. His blood had begun to go sticky beneath him, and when the paramedics lifted him--still conscious, tragically--from the cathedral floor, the flesh of his cheek pulled hesitantly away from the mess. One of them said, _Él se parece más joven que en las fotografías,_ and another fed something cool and slippery into his arteries so he did not have to be awake any longer. _Remember this,_ he made himself think as the church ceiling slid away, and he would.

He was twenty-six, and he had been in solitary for several months now. It was safer that way, he supposed. There were plenty of rival family members in Fuchū that wanted to stick a knife--or perhaps more likely a stolen and roughly sharpened spoon--into his neck, and Yuuri did not want to die at the hands of some nobody in a Tokyo prison. At least with Nikiforov, or on death row, there was a sense of celebrity, of importance to it. He began to miss the slip of blood on his hands, just a bit.

He was twenty-seven, and he was spending nearly every night in Viktor Nikiforov’s bedroom again. They fucked more than they did not, but Yuuri still did not let him touch him. There was power in it, in so clearly being _wanted_ and denying him the privilege. It was not revenge, but it was close. At the very least, it satisfied a need, and when one put it that way, it was easy to ignore exactly what and how Yuuri _wanted_ too.

* * *

 

Lately, it was a bit like going mad. Or maybe, it was a lot like going mad.

There was no justification for Viktor being as moronic about the affair as he was. There was no viable reason for him being quite so _stupid_ as to allow this when he knew it was about power and nothing else, when he knew it was a game for Yuuri as much as it was not a game for Viktor.

_Everything is about sex except sex,_ Yuuri had told him once, when Viktor was twenty-three and Yuuri still walked and spoke and dressed like only an Okukawa could. It was a stolen turn of phrase, and Viktor had recognized it. Finished it for him, even: _Sex is about power._

Wilde, which was amusing as much as it was fitting. There has always been a morbidly Wildean air about the both of them.

Since the first night Yuuri had spent in his bed in three years, since the night Yura had wrecked the Camaro, things had been different. Yuuri had begun to give him orders more frequently now, and it seemed he did it only for the pleasure of making Viktor bow and scrape and kneel. It was terrible and humiliating as much as it was wonderful, and it was like this:

“Give me control of your Kremlin connections,” Yuuri ordered in Viktor’s study. There was no room for negotiation in his tone. He did not look at Viktor as he said it.

“Will you refrain from killing them this time?”

Yuuri turned his face out the window. “As long as they do not deserve it.”

“I don't care for that answer,” Viktor said.

“And I don't care for your tone,” Yuuri bit back. “That was not a request. Give me names.”

And like that Viktor gave him names, and numbers, and home addresses. Something--the gentle slope to Yuuri’s shoulders, perhaps, or the careful contact between his fingers and the windowsill--compelled him to do so without an overabundance of bitterness. Yuuri knew what he was doing. Yuuri was an expert in business. Yuuri was a good man--at least, relatively good compared Viktor--and surely this meant he intended for him no immediate physical harm.

When Viktor had finished denouncing all of the Kremlin’s traitors, Yuuri had almost smiled. He had gestured for Viktor to come to him, and thoughtlessly, Viktor had obeyed. Mechanically, he let Katsuki Yuuri tip his face downward and kiss him without regard for the insincerity behind it. Stupidly, he allowed himself this indulgence far more often than was advised.

There was nothing deeper to Yuuri’s actions, nor to this habit of give-and-give-more Viktor was fast developing, and a large part of Viktor knew this. But it felt so good to be touched again--even if it was at the expense of Viktor’s control over one of the few advantages he still possessed--that he could not bring himself to stop.

“Inform Giacometti he will not stay the night,” Yuuri whispered another night, over dinner, and Viktor was so shocked by the audacity of the order that he complied. Without question.

“I want you to do a night shift on Vladimirsky,” Viktor told Chris levelly. “The owner’s been cheating us on tithes. Oversee business until the morning.”

Chris frowned, but he did not protest. He nodded, and later that night, Yuuri rewarded Viktor for his compliance. He slipped his hands beneath the fabric of Viktor’s shirt for a few eternal minutes, and Yuuri’s mouth was hot on his.

But still: Yuuri did not touch him without reason. Viktor was inclined to the creeping suspicion that Yuuri simply could not bring himself to touch Viktor Nikiforov without an ulterior motive, that each game of bribery for his touch was an exercise in testing his own limits. The rational part of Viktor’s mind respected this. Even the irrational part dare not consider the alternative.

(The in-between, purgatorial part of him did not especially care the reason, as long as it meant Yuuri would pay attention to him. Viktor was a willful sort of addict.)

Still, after the moon had risen and cast its white light onto the bare floor of Viktor’s study and Giacometti and Plisetsky and Babicheva had all gone to their respective homes:

“Why are you doing this?” _To me?_ he had meant to add, but the gasp rising in his throat had severed his ability to speak coherently. Yuuri’s hands moved independently of one another--one, cursory on his chest, and the other sliding up his thigh. “Yuuri.”

“Hmm?” Yuuri’s eyes were dark. Had Viktor not spent the entire evening in his presence, he would not have thought him sober.

Viktor forgot himself momentarily, and his hand drifted to Katsuki Yuuri’s throat. Yuuri gripped his wrist before Viktor could touch him, and returned his hand firmly to his side.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor whispered, and he was. Yuuri’s rules to this new game were obvious. They were the same as they had been when they had first met in Tokyo, six and a half years earlier.

The rules were that Viktor could look, but he could not touch. The rules were that Yuuri could touch, but he would not let himself enjoy.

Sometimes, however, Viktor thought he caught the edge of a secret expression that bled--just barely, like a thin cut--with what one might call want. _Desire_. Something more personal and intimate than Yuuri let on. Perhaps, Viktor dared to think, something which was not simply bored fulfillment of a general need to be fucked, by the closest faceless man who would let him into his bed.

Other times this secret appeared to blossom like a bruise beneath the pallor of his cheeks, burn away like acid on his tongue. But it never lingered, and Viktor was inclined to wishful thinking but he was far from stupid, and so the words _tell me the truth about what this is_ never passed his lips. Though, sometimes, he wanted them to.

Like now.

“Why do you do this?” Viktor whispered again, and Yuuri’s fingers on his wrist loosened, slid along his chest to cradle his cheek and then slip across his mouth. Remained there, loosely enough to allow him room to breath and yet firmly enough that Viktor could not speak without touching his lips against his palm in what was too dangerously close to a kiss. This was a multifaceted game Yuuri had taken to playing--testing how far he could tempt Viktor Nikiforov into touching him, as well as how long he could silence him. _You sure do love the sound of your own voice,_ he would whisper against his cheek, and when Viktor would close his eyes and lean forward and breathe _yes_ then Yuuri’s weight in his lap would be gone. The room would be empty. Katsuki Yuuri, who had certainly been there just a moment ago, would have lost interest (or feigned so) by the ease in which he won the game. Viktor Nikiforov would begin to wonder, in the new loneliness of the room, whether Yuuri had ever actually been there at all.

In those moments one could see, quite clearly, how Viktor Nikiforov was beginning to lose his mind.

_“Yuuri,”_ he murmured, against the gently-raised scars on his palm, his interest in knowing Katsuki’s motives quite forgotten now with these new stimuli of fingers against lips and lips against cheekbones, and nearly within the same moment, Yuuri slipped off his lap. As a part of Viktor had known he would.

He did not think when he reached out, closed his fingers around his wrist, but he did brace himself for the strike which came next. Yuuri’s free hand came to his face too fast to duck beneath, but the hit itself never landed. When Viktor opened his eyes there was fury in Yuuri’s expression, something cornered in the curve to his body. He would kill him, certainly, if Viktor did not let him go. Immediately.

Viktor did not let him go.

He said, “Yuuri,” and the fury in Katsuki Yuuri’s expression dissolved. He looked, suddenly, hollow in a way Viktor had rarely seen him. It was sharply terrifying. Now, Viktor let him go.

Still, Yuuri lingered for a moment, and the war waging inside him was indicative in the way he mouthed the words _thank you_ and _fuck you_ interchangeably.

Viktor repeated, “Why do you do this?” and quietly, Katsuki Yuuri said, “The dreaming.”

And then he was gone.

Lately, living in this tomb of a house, trying so vainly to know again a man who clearly did not want to be known, without wisdom of what it was he would even gain from it--lately, it was a lot like going mad.

* * *

 

“You look tired.” He hadn't meant to sound so accusing about it. But when Katsuki Yuuri shot him a withering glare, Phichit merely gestured at his face with a pair of chopsticks. “That only proves my point.”

Katsuki Yuuri sat across from him at the desk which now moonlighted as Phichit’s dining room table. He regarded sullenly the takeout Phichit had brought home for supper (for himself, really, back when he hadn't been expecting a visitor) and remained silent. Phichit Chulanont found the image of arguably the world’s most prolific criminal sitting at his desk, picking at takeout from the mom-and-pop type Vietnamese place at which Phichit had already become a regular, so damn implausible it nearly made him laugh. He rocked back on his heels and swallowed the urge to do so, for his own sake.

“I want to move up the date.”

Now Phichit choked. “Excuse me?”

Katsuki Yuuri looked at him levelly. “I want to move up the date.”

“The date.”

Katsuki narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”

“And is there--” He paused. Chose his next words carefully. “Do you have justification for that decision?”

“Not anything you need to hear,” Katsuki Yuuri said dismissively, as if it was really that easy. Phichit felt a soreness in his jaw which had begun to accompany his new habit of grinding his teeth in frustration whenever circumstance dictated he spend any time at all in Katsuki Yuuri’s presence.

“Actually, I believe I do need to hear it,” Phichit said thinly. “Since I’m the one who’s going to take the blame and the bullet for it.”

Katsuki waved a hand. “The bullet is inevitable anyway.”

Uncontrollably, Phichit snapped, “Are you ever _not_ an asshole?” and to his surprise, Katsuki merely tipped his head. He didn't smile, but he didn't glower either, and that was new for him. He had never taken Phichit’s insults nor his refusal to follow orders so cordially before.

“No,” Katsuki said, and the lack of opposition emboldened Phichit. He scowled.

“Then the jury’s decision is no.” Furiously, he jabbed at his dinner and promptly lost all desire or intention to eat. “By the way, hello. I’m your jury.”

“Witty,” Katsuki replied, and Phichit fumed.

“Yes, I thought so.”

Unbothered, Katsuki shrugged. Continued the conversation as if Phichit had agreed with all the customary bows and scrapes Yuuri must have expected. “Then I’ll go over your head. And then the Fuchū problem remains your own.”

“Fuck you.”

“Mm.” Yuuri tipped foolishly backwards in the desk chair, like a petulant child. “I preferred when you were afraid of me, I think.”

Was he not afraid of him anymore? Phichit considered the claim. Certainly, he was not as afraid of him as he had been, nor as much as he should be. There was still that flicker of terror, a prey instinct which flared whenever one encountered an apex predator, when Katsuki Yuuri moved too quickly or narrowed his eyes too sharply or said _absolutely not_ with too much venom. But fear--real, long-lasting, rational fear? Phichit didn't know. He verged more toward annoyance nowadays.

He tightened his jaw and impetuously tipped his chin. Katsuki regarded him with arched brows before directing his attention boredly to his cuticles.

After a length of silence, Phichit leaned over the desk and retrieved something from a stack of confidential files he certainly shouldn't have been allowing Katsuki Yuuri to peruse so blithely. He was so tragically horrible at his job, nowadays.

“I read your book, by the way,” he said, flashing the cover at Katsuki boldly. “S’fucked up.”

“Mm.” His company sounded bemused. “You think so?”

Phichit looked at him flatly. “Yes.” He flipped open the Japanese translation of Bulgakov, the one Viktor Nikiforov had touched and surely therefore infused with decades of evil energy (Phichit had become prone to fancy in his months alone in Saint Petersburg), and said, “I liked it, though.”

“Mm,” Katsuki remarked, a statement which was neither here nor there and yet somehow infuriated Phichit.

Tightening his grip on the book, Phichit read spitefully aloud from the pages, _“This twenty year old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him and he went and sold her to a brothel--”_

He broke off. Katsuki Yuuri was watching him with a sort of fatal interest. Phichit felt the peculiar nervousness which came with being methodically dissected by one’s eyes, and faltered. Then squared his shoulders, and tilted his head barely to the side. A taunt. “Hm.”

Katsuki Yuuri looked him the face for a very long time, and Phichit Chulanont did not look away. Then Yuuri stood from the desk and grabbed his suit jacket from where it was slung across the back of the chair.

“I’m moving up the date,” he concluded, and that was that. Phichit stood too, nearly as abruptly, as Katsuki made his way to the door.

“This would be a lot simpler for me to pull off if you only admitted you want to save him,” he snapped. “But instead you pretend this is for your own sake, and it's because you're a coward. You're a coward, and you know as much as I do that you _still--”_

“Enough.” Yuuri had stopped before the door, but he had not turned. The line of his shoulders was severe. “That's enough.”

Phichit said, “I'm not finished,” and Yuuri’s left hand curled into a fist at his side.

“You are if you want to keep your teeth, Phichit Chulanont,” he said dangerously, and Phichit remembered himself. Barely, barely, barely, he dipped his head. Chastised.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “That wasn't right of me.”

“No,” Katsuki agreed, but the fist loosened at his side. His voice was soft. “I won't be as generous the next time.”

“Do you want me to contact--”

“I’ll do it.” He tipped his head backwards, gently, and his shoulders relaxed a bit. “Have you gotten anything on my family?”

“Yes,” Phichit said, speaking of the envelope in the desk drawers now, which for some reason he couldn't bring himself to extract now, stuffed full of photos of the three Katsukis who still resided in Japan. “I’ll send you them.”

“Thank you,” Katsuki murmured. Phichit nodded. He placed a hand on the stack of files on his desk and watched the ground.

“Yuuri,” he said, at the last second, and looked up. If Katsuki objected to the use of his given name, it didn't show. He merely turned to face him and blinked. “Be careful with him.”

A brief, mocking smile. Katsuki Yuuri said, “Always am,” and it was terribly, abundantly clear it was a lie. Phichit allowed him to get away with it, because he could think of nothing else to say.

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov was twenty-four, and he would never admit to being an addict.

It was simply an absurd concept, that someone with his power and his wealth and his looks would _need_ something like he needed chemical highs and dizzying crashes and depressant-induced sleep. People like Viktor Nikiforov, people who spoke like him and looked like him and lived like him, were not _addicts_. They had too much money for that.

And yet.

And yet the world was soft and muted and Viktor did not _need_ this, of course not, but it was so damned nice how could one _not_ want it? Katsuki Yuuri was curled in his lap--he had been previously sat at the piano, playing some piece much too drowsily for Viktor to recognize it, but want had drawn him to Viktor easily enough. His mouth lingered at his throat, and his fingers twisted in his hair behind Viktor’s ear, but he did not venture for anything more. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and his hands were cold.

“‘S freezing,” he mumbled against the side of Viktor’s neck, though it was truthfully not very cold at all, and shoved his hand beneath Viktor’s unbuttoned shirt. Viktor flinched at the iciness of his palm. Removed Yuuri’s hand from where it laid flat against his chest and instead pressed lazy kisses to each of his fingers. Yuuri tipped his head backward and smiled.

“Better?” Viktor murmured between kisses, and Yuuri made a vague sound of agreement. He was high enough that Viktor could mold him effortlessly in his own hands, high enough that anything Viktor proposed would receive that same gentle, sleepy agreement, and Viktor knew very well not to abuse this. When Yuuri returned his focus to his throat, marking the skin at the edge of Viktor’s jaw lightly with his teeth, Viktor pressed a hand gently to his chest.

A halfhearted whine escaped him, but Yuuri bent willowly under the contact and drew away. Viktor slid his hand carefully upward and placed it against his cheek. Unconsciously, Yuuri closed his eyes, and his lips parted dreamily.

“You’ve done a bit too much,” Viktor remarked, and against his palm, Yuuri nodded. “I think you should get some rest.”

“Mm.” Yuuri turned his face into Viktor's hand and bit at his palm. “You're an excellent nanny.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor began, but arguing required energy he couldn't bring himself to expend, and even without possession of his complete sober reasoning Yuuri was a damningly good kisser, and Viktor closed his own eyes and let his head tip back contentedly. Yuuri’s mouth worked at his neck, his fingers cool beneath the curve of Viktor’s jaw, and Viktor sighed.

“I’m serious,” he tried again, but could not convincingly vocalize the sentiment, and Yuuri simply laughed.

“I’m sure,” he murmured, his voice quietly teasing. At Viktor’s throat, his hand had begun to tremble. “I…” Viktor opened his eyes, and Yuuri frowned. Splayed his own fingers in front of his face and inspected them like foreign objects. “S’cold.”

“Yuuri.” Because something about this was very _wrong_ , and Viktor was too stupidly high to identify what it was, but he _knew_. And suddenly, without conceivable reason, he was terrified.

Katsuki Yuuri swayed heavily before leaning against his chest, and against Viktor’s clavicle his cheek was cool too, and this was _not right_ it _wasn’t--_

“You were correct, darling,” Yuuri mumbled, his mouth brushing his skin chastely. “Did too much.”

His lips were blue. His skin was grey. Viktor discovered this by wrapping his hands firmly around Yuuri’s shoulders and pulling him upwards to look at him, by cupping his face in his hands and turning his head roughly to inspect his pupils. His eyes were impossibly glassy.

“Yuuri.”

“Mm,” Yuuri replied without moving his lips. His vision slid out of focus horribly, and he was heavy against Viktor’s shoulder. “M’tired.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor said again, because he could think of nothing else to say. His common sense was subdued under a thick, sleepy blanket of snow. Everything moved too slowly for the urgency Viktor knew he should be feeling. “Yuuri, please look at me.”

“I think,” Katsuki Yuuri murmured, and he had begun to shiver violently. His head nodded against Viktor’s shoulder in the continuous struggle to keep himself upright. “I think you should call Christophe, love.”

It was about then the his eyes rolled back into his head and he went very still and very cold and Viktor had the unsettling sensation that he was cradling a corpse in his lap.

His fingers were not cooperative, and his mind less so, when he called Christophe Giacometti.

“I need help,” he babbled, and he was not sure he was coherent in the slightest. “Something--something happened.”

Chris wasted no time with stupid questions. He knew Viktor's habits well enough now. “Where are you?”

“Home.” Viktor had begun to shake. “I’m home.”

“What did he do?”

“I--I don't know.” Viktor wracked his addled memory for information from the beginning of the night. “Ketamine. It was ketamine.”

“Alright.” Something in the background of Chris’ call: a scattering of keys, a drowsy male voice. “Alright, Vik, listen to me. Get him warm. I need him kept warm, or he’s going to die. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Viktor whispered.

“Stay on the phone with me, if you can. Are you sober?”

Viktor shook his head, then remembered that Chris could not see him and said, “No. M’not.”

“Fine.” The startup of a car engine. Chris swearing lowly into the receiver. “Then you're really going to have to stay on the phone with me. Get him warm.”

“I--I can’t--”

“Put me on speaker. Put the phone in your pocket. Do you need me to walk you through the rest?”

Viktor Nikiforov was dizzyingly high. He nodded, then whispered, “Yes. Please.”

“Alright.” Another low curse. “Can you wake him?”

“No.” Viktor tried. Yuuri’s cheek was waxen beneath his hand. For the briefest moment, Viktor worried he wasn't breathing. “Chris--”

“Relax, Vik. Take a deep breath.” Viktor did as instructed. Chris’ tone became softly encouraging. “You aren't any use to him if you panic. What can you do to warm him up?”

Viktor closed his eyes. “I--I can run a bath.”

Chris said, “Good. Run a bath. Keep his head above the water.”

“Chris--”

“Jesus Christ, _now_ , Vik,” Christophe snapped. “There's no time for this.”

Once again, Viktor nodded. He lifted Yuuri from the sofa--he felt awfully like dead weight now, and Viktor shook to think so--and did his best not to stumble as he carried him. Viktor tested the heat of the tap on the back of his hand before he placed Yuuri into the bathtub.

_Get him warm. Keep his head above the water._ Viktor Nikiforov repeated the advice to himself like a mantra, like it alone would save him. There was nothing else for him to do. He lifted Yuuri’s hand from the water and attempted to massage bloodflow back into his fingers. From the speaker on Viktor’s cell, Chris murmured something low which sounded like a curse.

“Please don't do this,” Viktor whispered to Yuuri, and he did not care if Chris could hear him through the phone. “Please stay here. Please.”

_Get him warm. Keep his head above the water._ He could do that.

Viktor realized, numbly, that he had begun to shake.

“What else?” he demanded suddenly of his phone. His speech was thick. “Tell me what else.”

“Alright.” Chris’ voice from his pocket. “I need you to tell me what and how much he did. As best you can remember, because the more I know the better chance I have to help him. Do you understand, Viktor?”

Viktor nodded to communicate that he did. The space beneath Yuuri’s fingernails had begun to go blue. “It was K,” he said, as steadily as he could manage. “A...a lot of it. I don't--”

“Anything else? Did he drink?”

“N-no, I--” Terror was a sobering thing. Viktor felt as if he might be sick when he whispered, “Is he going to be okay?”

Chris must have taken pity on him, finally. “Of course, Vik,” he assured him. “Of course. I’m here. Tell me where you are.”

“First floor,” he whispered. “Down the hall.”

It only took a few moments for Christophe to find them, to take in the scene and shove Viktor away from the tub. He protested wordlessly at first, some desperate animal sound made in the throat, but then Chris had his fingers at Yuuri’s neck and was taking his pulse and Viktor remembered. Chris was here to save his life. Viktor was the deadweight in this situation.

He followed perfectly every order which was given to him; fear of death and god and being left alone in this massive, echoey mausoleum had done an excellent job in sobering him up. His hands still shook, and he found himself staring in blank terror at the movement of Chris’ shoulders more often than not, and yet he mechanically did as he was told until Chris sat back on his heels and sighed.

Terror rose in Viktor’s throat and he was on his feet and he was saying, “Oh _god--”_

“He’s alright.” Chris cradled his own head in his hands. “He’ll live, Viktor.”

Softly: “Thank you.”

“Yes.” Chris stood, stepped back so Viktor could stumble forward, and then he was pulling Yuuri’s head gently upward and he was draining the tub and _goddamn_ he was going to cry here, wasn't he, high as he was, ruined as he was--

“I’m staying the night,” Chris said flatly now, as he turned on his heel to leave. “You're in no state to be left alone with him.”

“Thank you,” he whispered again, but Chris did not acknowledge the gratitude before letting the door close behind him.

His hands were still trembling when he noticed Yuuri had begun to shiver, and he told himself this was good because shivering meant he was alive. There was color, a slight pink, returning to the bluish pale of his cheeks. Viktor laid a palm flat against his forehead and Yuuri made a light, incoherent sound of protest in his throat which thrilled him.

“You’re okay,” he murmured fervently, petting his damp hair like he could make him well simply through touch alone. “You're okay, you're okay. You’re alive. I’m going to get you warm.”

His clothes were sopping wet when he lifted him from the tub and Viktor didn't care; what he did care about was the way Yuuri, fingers pulling weakly at the fabric of Viktor’s shirt, buried his face into the crook of his neck and sighed. What he did care about was the chill of his body against Viktor’s own, and the terrible shivering of his shoulders. What he did care about was the way Yuuri murmured, “M’sorry,” into his throat, like Viktor would have cared, like it could have ever _mattered_ , like apology was necessary when he was alive and not on the brink of death in a bathtub anymore.

Viktor carried him to the bedroom, taking extra care not to stumble even though the shift from gentle sleepiness to overwhelming exhaustion which preceded a ketamine comedown was already hellbent on tripping him up. Yuuri nodded off against his shoulder, and once in their bedroom Viktor was loath to wake him. But he had grown heavy, and Viktor couldn't exactly carry him and undress him both at once, on his own, and so he said softly into his hair: “Yuuri. I’m sorry. Can you--”

“Mm.” As if it took great effort for him to do so, Yuuri lifted his head from the crook of his neck. “Yeah.”

And so Viktor set him in the desk chair, and when his head dropped forward like it was too heavy to keep upright, Viktor held his jaw and tipped up his chin.

“Hey,” he murmured, and then, “This will be fast, yes? I need to take your wet clothes off, and then you can sleep. Yes?”

A muted hum. “Yeah.”

“Alright. Lift your arms.” He did, and Viktor stripped him efficiently of his shirt, then his trousers. Then, hesitation. “Do you want fresh clothes back on, or--”

“Viktor.” Yuuri swayed against him, even the brief syllables of his name heavy on his tongue.

And right. Of course. Viktor was still a bit high, and common sense still eluded him, but he figured now clothing was the least of Katsuki Yuuri’s concerns. He looked more miserable every passing second.

“Okay. Okay. I’m sorry.” He was so, so foolish. He snatched a few blankets from the bed, leaving the duvet where it lay, and heaped them on the desk. Then went about the process of wrapping a shivering Katsuki Yuuri in as many blankets as possible, as quickly as his fumbling hands could manage. “Is that better?”

“Mhmm.” The barest movement to his lips and sleepy, half-veiled gaze. Viktor kissed his mouth, and then each of his eyes. Then he picked him up again--bulkier now with his abundance of blankets, but undeniably warmer as well--and carried him to bed.

“Thank you,” Yuuri murmured, or perhaps Viktor imagined it. They slept with Yuuri’s head tucked again into the hollow of Viktor’s throat, his fingers splayed and tapping light, unconscious patterns against Viktor’s chest. The latter had one arm propped beneath his own head, and the other draped over Yuuri’s shoulder, cradling his head against Viktor’s shoulder. He stroked his hair drowsily, until long after Yuuri had gone quiet and still and warm beside him, until sleep too claimed Viktor Nikiforov for the few remaining dark hours of the night.

When he woke in the morning, Yuuri was gone.

He found him on the floor of the bathroom, semi-clothed as if he had been in the process of dressing himself when his legs gave out from beneath him. There was a bruise blooming already on his cheek, the one which had slammed against the edge of the sink when he’d fallen, visible immediately only because Yuuri had somehow managed to drag himself off of the floor and into a sitting position to lean woozily against the tub.

Glimpsing Viktor now, he imparted to him a small, pained smile, and his fingers twitched against his thigh.

“Oh,” Viktor said, and he went to his knees beside him, tracing with trembling hands the bluish edges of the bruise on his face. “Oh, no. Yuuri.”

“M’sorry,” Katsuki Yuuri mumbled, eyes closed now. “Stupid of me.”

“Please don’t apologize. Oh, no. _Yuuri.”_

“Mm.” The admission was carefully controlled, and yet Viktor felt the dampness against his shoulder and knew he was crying. “Hurts.”

“I know. I know. Oh, _god_. You should have woken me, Yura.”

“M’sorry,” he repeated quietly. “I don't...I don't remember…”

No. Of course he wouldn't. Even the barest of excess of ketamine stole memories, and Yuuri had certainly breached that limit the previous night. Viktor cradled his head in his hands and kissed the space between his eyes softly. “That’s okay. I can help you remember. Will it hurt if I lift you?”

“Everything hurts,” Yuuri murmured, the words sliding into one another, but he shook his head. Viktor gathered him in his arms and carried him from the room and back to the bed.

Eyes closed, Yuuri made a vague noise of surprise at the soft yield of the duvet folding around him, as if he had expected Viktor to lay him back down on the cold floor. The irresistible desire to touch him, never stop touching him, because as long as he had a hold on Katsuki Yuuri he could never lose him, prompted Viktor to dip his head and kiss his throat, just once.

Then he slipped into bed beside him, and he said, “It was a ketamine overdose.”

Yuuri’s hand sought him out blindly beneath the sheets, and Viktor entwined their fingers as gently as he could. _“Feels_ like a K overdose,” Yuuri mumbled, and all at once Viktor felt like both laughing and sobbing. He settled for an involuntary choking gasp which caused Yuuri’s grip to shift between his fingers.

“Don’t,” he whispered, like he knew, and now Viktor did laugh, but brokenly.

“Don't tell me don’t,” he said, somewhat too sharply. “I thought you were going to _die_ , Yuuri. You _were_ going to die, and it was only because of Chris that you didn't--”

“M’sorry,” Yuuri repeated softly, a slight twitch to his mouth and furrow to his brow signifying that Viktor’s volume was causing him pain. _“Anata_. M’sorry.”

“Oh,” Viktor said, because Yuuri had begun to tremble again, and his fingers spasmed in Viktor’s grip, and his jaw was tight and Viktor kept thinking oh oh oh. He’d gone too far. This was hardly the most opportune moment to chastise him for the night before. Thoughtlessly, he reached out and gathered Yuuri into his arms again, as if he was small enough for an action such as this to be second-nature, tucked him earnestly against his chest. Viktor swayed, just enough to distract him and encourage the trembling to subside.

“Shh,” Viktor murmured, his fingers gentle at Yuuri’s temples. Yuuri gasped. “Shh, Yura. It’s fine. You’ll be alright. Hush.”

“I didn't--I hadn’t meant--”

“I know, love. I know.” Viktor paused to swipe at Yuuri’s tear-stained cheeks with his thumbs. Yuuri’s face was slick with sweat. “I was just afraid of losing you, is all. Hush. You’re safe. You're okay. You’ll always be okay.”

_I’m sorry,_ he didn't say. _I’m so terrified to lose you. That's all._

It was late morning. The drawn curtains kept the room dark, but the growing warmth of the room hinted at the ascending position of the sun. Yuuri dozed for the remainder of the day, and Viktor left his side only intermittently, too terrified was he of losing Katsuki Yuuri twice over. Selfish excuse for love as it was, he couldn’t bear the terror of being alone in this house ever again.

* * *

 

That night he found Yuuri in the library, because Yuuri had intended to be found.

“Beskudnikov misses your company,” Viktor said, and Yuuri tipped back his head until it met the back of the sofa and made himself smile.

“Doesn’t everyone?” he drawled, and he felt Viktor’s sigh down to his bones. “He’ll have to beg a bit more if he wants to see me in person.”

It must have occurred to Viktor that he had recently given Yuuri all of Beskudnikov’s private information which the Plisetskys had on file, and that Yuuri could do what he liked with it, because he said, “You haven’t _threatened_ him--”

“Oh, of course not.” Lying was so easy when one has nothing left to lose. “One Kremlin economist? He’s not worth the threats I could make up for him.”

Perhaps that was a disservice to Grigori Beskudnikov. He was an FSB man, and pride would have driven him mad to know Yuuri had just demoted him to _some Kremlin economist._ But a Kremlin economist was what he was to Viktor Nikiforov, and Yuuri was not so careless with his own life anymore that he would divulge such crucial secret information as that.

He watched Viktor for any recognition of this falsehood and found nothing. Though, Viktor had always been a better liar.

Viktor did not speak for a brief eternity, still standing at a distance from Yuuri as he was. Then he said, “Can we talk?”

“Aren't we already?” But Yuuri was already dipping his head and shifting to make room for Viktor on the sofa and Viktor was looking at him so earnestly the rest of his venom dissipated on Yuuri’s tongue. He said, “We can.”

“Thank you,” Viktor Nikiforov said softly, and though he had asked to speak he let silence draw again between them for several moments. Yuuri inspected his nails with a projected air of boredom.

Finally, Viktor said, “I still have men in Fuchū,” and Yuuri’s blood ran cold.

“Mm. Do you?” He worked carefully to keep the waver from his voice. It was marginally successful.

“Yes.” He blinked, then purposefully folded his hands. “And now I have names. And I promised you--”

“Please,” Yuuri might have said, might have whispered, though he couldn't possibly have done it on purpose. He was so suddenly _afraid_. Viktor was still regarding him with a painful type of honesty.

“Fukada Tomatsu. Kawana Tengo. Tetsuya Takahashi,” Viktor recited the names with something near reverence. “I memorized them.”

“Oh,” Yuuri whispered. _Oh. Of course._ His hands were trembling still. “You said--” He faltered.

“I could do this for you. I have names, cell numbers, men who are more than willing--”

Minutely, Yuuri shook his head. Then again, more vehemently. “No.” And again: _“No.”_

“But--” Viktor blinked at him, and his mouth turned down into the briefest, smallest imitation of a frown. “You _said_ , and I promised--”

“I won't have someone else execute them on my behalf, Nikiforov.” Panic was still leaching from his mind, and the words came perhaps colder than intended. “Though I thank you. For the offer.”

“Oh.” For a flicker of a moment, he looked crestfallen. “Yes. I understand.”

“Is that all you wanted?” God _damn_ him. Everything he said was still too sharp-edged. Viktor’s fingers twitched in his lap. “Or was there more?”

“Yuuri,” Viktor mumbled, his gaze stubbornly fixed on his hands. “I didn't mean--I don't want you to be insulted by that. I didn't intend to suggest--”

“Yes,” Yuuri said, and he blinked too quickly, for too long. “I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Is that all you wanted?” Yuuri repeated. Viktor’s eyes finally tore away from his hands, and he blinked at Yuuri as if he had forgotten he was beside him. His mouth formed words which did not find outlet in sounds, and there was a peculiar sadness to his expression.

“Beskudnikov said he wants to see you,” he said mechanically. “He insists, actually. And he said to remind you that--” He frowned. “That he requires cooperation to do his job.”

Yuuri’s mouth thinned. “Noted.” Hazily, Viktor Nikiforov shook his head.

“I have more to say,” he whispered. “I mean, if that--is that acceptable?”

Conversation about Beskudnikov had destroyed all fleeting desire to be generous. Still, Yuuri stayed where he was. “I can hardly stop you.”

Softly, Viktor laughed. “The past few weeks would disagree.” His expression sobered when Yuuri scowled. “I'm sorry.”

Yuuri stood from the sofa and strode to the window behind it. Sitting there, under such estranged circumstances from those which Yuuri remembered so well, years ago in the same library, had suddenly become unbearable. He said, “Please.” Then, when he heard Viktor Nikiforov tentatively make as if to join him, he said, “Don’t.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor said, in that pathetically gentle way he always did which made something in Yuuri’s chest pull and for that reason he _hated_ it. “Can’t you let me fix this?”

“There is nothing to fix.” Yuuri was already _doing_ all he could, more than he should ever do, to absolve himself of the various sins he had committed. Nothing Viktor Nikiforov could do would ever meet the standards Yuuri held for himself, and thus any attempt on his part would be fruitless. Embarrassing, even. Surely too, too kind for the man Yuuri preferred to imagine him to be, nowadays.

“You know that's a lie.”

“Don't tell me what I know.”

In lieu of words, Viktor sighed. Silence suffocated them, and Yuuri thought, _This twenty year old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him and he went and sold her to a brothel--_

“Tell me about your dreams, Yuuri. Please.”

Sharply, Yuuri said, “No.”

“Yuuri--”

“Why do you want to know?” Yuuri rounded on him, turning sharply on his heel and tearing his mouth into a snarl. “Do you want me to say it aloud that badly? You’d get off to that, wouldn't you? Hearing me say it? You already _know--”_

Viktor was standing. He stayed where he was, mercifully, but his change in posture meant Yuuri had to raise his face to see him. Again, Yuuri blinked too much and too often.

Viktor Nikiforov said, _“Yuuri,”_ like his name was a pretty, delicate thing, and Yuuri felt a sob claw its way up his throat.

Quietly, he said, “You know what they are.”

“No. But I know you don't need to keep them all,” Viktor replied reverently. “Let me--” Here, he faltered. “Let me bear some of the weight, Yura.”

_Don’t_ call _me that,_ Yuuri wanted to snap, and yet he couldn’t, he couldn't, he couldn't. He was pathetic. He had worked so _hard_ to keep this from him, the constant exhaustion of existing so inescapably in the same space as a man he undoubtedly still loved though he desperately didn't want to, the mounting horror of dreaming of blood on his hands his face blood in his lungs blood everywhere everywhere everywhere every _goddamn_ night, having to act as if he was in control because they would all kill him if he slipped, even _once--_

And suddenly, inevitably, it was all coming out now. The dam had burst, his resolve had broken, and he was so _tired_ that he couldn't stop himself from confessing softly, “I dream that you die.”

“You do,” Viktor said, in acknowledgment but not surprise. Katsuki Yuuri’s hands trembled.

But he wasn't finished. Something else had possessed him, some honesty he hadn't been stupid enough to allow before, and it damned him. “And I dream that I die. That you kill me, and I kill you, and sometimes my parents and sometimes you bleed all over the _goddamn bed--”_

“Yuuri.” He was there, suddenly, in front of him, his hands before his face but just hesitating to touch him. Yuuri flinched, but he did not step back.

Instead, he gasped. _“Fuck_. Fuck. I didn't-- _fuck--”_

“Yuuri,” Viktor said lowly, like he was a spooked animal. He still did not venture to touch him. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”

Another gasp, a desperate laugh. _Safe_. He hadn't been safe in years. It was apparent that such a fact had begun to chip away at his sanity, finally.

“I didn't mean…” he murmured, and he closed his eyes and swayed. “Please don't--”

Viktor’s hand, all this time unmoving between them, lowered. “It’s okay. I’ve already forgotten, if that’s what you want.”

_Yes. No._ Yuuri didn't know. Slowly, he shook his head.

“I don't--” He broke off. Whispered. “Thank you.”

Viktor Nikiforov hesitated. Then he said, “Of course,” and his eyes never left Yuuri’s face.

_Remember this,_ Yuuri made himself think. In a month from now, when he and Viktor Nikiforov would be nothing but a generous footnote in the history of Saint Petersburg--perhaps marginally larger figures, if they were lucky, in the history of organized crime-- _Remember what he did to you, but also remember this._

And he would. He vowed it.

* * *

 

**Dynasties: The Right Hand Men (and Woman) of the Plisetsky Family**   
_by Agrafena Svetlov_

Katsuki Yuuri’s quiet slip from the Petersburg stage in the past few weeks has not gone unnoticed by Russian elite. Since the Japanese crime boss announced his return to the Russian drug business by beheading a man on the Mikhailovsky state months ago (read article _here_ ), hosting the infamously untouchable Plisetsky gala on, sources claim, his own terms rather than Viktor Nikiforov’s (see photos _here_ ), and making another appearance in a club of rumored Plisetsky payroll a few weeks ago (photos _here_ ), Katsuki Yuuri has all but vanished from the Petersburg scene. Though we do not venture to claim that Katsuki Yuuri has lost his chokehold on the infamously dissident higher-ups of his own family (indeed, we have been advised against doing so by numerous outside sources), we do wish to cast a spotlight of sorts on the numerous cast of criminals behind Katsuki and Nikiforov’s better-known faces.

_Christophe Giacometti_  
Nikiforov’s second in command since the days preceding the Katsuki-Nikiforov empire, Christophe Giacometti has been making increasingly frequent appearances in the public eye. He is Swiss, Geneva-born and bred, though his allegiance to the Plisetsky house seems to date back to before adulthood. Photographs of a teenaged Giacometti accompanying a barely-older Viktor Nikiforov in the days of Nikolai Plisetsky’s reign were once abundant on the Internet, though they have since been removed by third parties.

_Pictured: Christophe Giacometti, left, at age 28. Pictured here with 29-year-old crime boss Viktor Nikiforov at a Nevsky club, July 2017._

Giacometti’s fame comes from his proximity to both Katsuki and Nikiforov during the height of Plisetsky power, as well as his non-Russian origin. It had been theorized that in the year following Katsuki Yuuri’s deposition, Giacometti was a serious contender for his throne. Certainly, a foreign man in a powerful position who entertains a dubious relationship with Viktor Nikiforov is no unusual character within the Plisetsky house.

_Mila Babicheva_  
Younger than the triptych of pretty men which decorated so many newspapers half a decade ago, Mila Babicheva has regardless been making a name for herself with as much fervor as her male predecessors. Babicheva recently made headlines for her attendance at the Mikhailovsky beheading, though she is infamous in her own regard as well. She is pretty, female, and properly Russian (unlike two-thirds of the family’s leading men), and fast becoming a popular cult figure regardless of her apparent predispensity for inciting drama between rival crime families.

_Pictured: Mila Babicheva (right) in Rome, in the company of Italian crime princess Sara Crispino, April 2016._

_Pictured: Mila Babicheva with Viktor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri on the Mikhailovsky stage. Another Plisetsky member, Stepan Likhoyedev, was executed at Katsuki’s hand this same night._

She is also generally regarded as the most bloodthirsty of the new Plisetsky elite, and is wanted by Russian police for several counts of torture and at least one homicide.

_Georgi Popovich_  
Popovich is perhaps the most low-profile of the Plisetsky inner circle, and likely remains so largely because of his past arrest records. He is an art thief as well as a mobster, and has a history of run-ins with the law in both Russia and the United States for theft and assault. Any case against the more gruesome crimes in which he has participated has never stood up in court, and Popovich has walked free twice from his judicial trials, thanks to his friends in higher places. He too is a child soldier of the Plisetsky regime, another orphaned like Nikiforov and groomed to carry on the family drug business from an early age.

_Pictured: Georgi Popovich on trial in 2015 for art and cultural property theft in the United States of America. He walked free from said trial, though most sources claim compelling DNA evidence was stacked against him. He has since returned to Saint Petersburg._

Yakov Feltsman  
Though outstripped in fame and favor by his younger counterparts, Feltsman is perhaps the most dangerous member of the Plisetsky mob simply for having lasted the longest in the business. Though little is known about his personal or professional affairs, it is well recorded that Feltsman engaged in the tutelage (and perhaps also surrogate parenthood) of family members such as Viktor Nikiforov, Georgi Popovich, Mila Babicheva, and Yuri Plisetsky.

_Pictured (left): Yakov Feltsman with young Viktor Nikiforov, prior to the Plisetsky regime change nearly a decade ago. Nikiforov is approximately 20 years of age at the time of the photograph; Feltsman is estimated to have taught him since late childhood._

_Pictured (center): Yakov Feltsman in 1998, pictured here with the late Nikolai Plisetsky, former patriarch of the Plisetsky mob. Circumstances of his death remain controversial._

_Pictured (right): Feltsman in 2017, with Viktor Nikiforov and Yuri Plisetsky on Nevsky Prospekt, where stands one of the two infamous Plisetsky estates._

Newspapers from decades before the rise of the Katsuki-Nikiforov era, from a time when it has been argued that Feltsman and his then-wife Lilia Baranovskaya orchestrated the Plisetsky business from behind closed doors, depict him as a nearly Katsuki-esque figure: cunning climber of the social strata, though perhaps lacking the undeniable Katsuki gravitas which won the latter his fame. It has been suggested (though it is a theory to which the Novaya Gazeta shall not admit to ascribe) that Feltsman has continued his orchestration of the mob into the Nikiforov era and that, regardless of Katsuki Yuuri’s current leadership, Yakov Feltsman is still pulling some strings. Either way, Katsuki’s recent public silence means nothing if one considers the epochal history of the Plisetsky family--the men on Nevsky Prospekt are endlessly lucky, famously ferocious, and infamously unpredictable.

And, perhaps more importantly: there is always another to inherit the business, when that endless luck finally withers away. 

* * *

 

Chris was already in his study, sitting on his desk when Viktor slipped inside the room. He was displeased with the company, and yet unsurprised.

“Postpone it,” Viktor said, and Chris did not turn to look at him. He was gazing pensively out the floor-length window.

He said, “No,” and Viktor scowled.

“Don’t defy me,” he replied lowly. “I said postpone it.”

“And _I_ said no.”

“Chris--”

“Does he fuck you every night, Viktor?” Christophe Giacometti’s ring finger tapped a thoughtful rhythm on the surface of his desk. He was wearing his engagement ring, which was characteristically flashier than Viktor’s had been. “Or just every other?”

Rage. Viktor felt it sweep, crash through him like a natural disaster. “You will _not_ speak to me like that--”

“I won't postpone it. You only want me to because you know I am right, and the guilt is making you soft.” Now, he turned, just barely, and the line of his jaw was visible against the gentle light of the setting sun. “Or maybe that’s something else.”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, grow up, Nikiforov.” Chris waved a hand dismissively. “It's time to run the goddamn business.”

“I will only tell you one last time,” Viktor snarled. “Postpone it, Christophe.”

Chris hummed. Surveyed his nails. “Can’t. Already called.”

Rather than punish him for insubordination, as position and rank dictated he should have, Viktor felt his shoulders slope downward. His mouth went soft with pleading. “Chris,” he whispered, and the disgust was apparent in Chris’ shadowed face. “Please.”

Christophe Giacometti uncrossed his legs and stood from where he had been perched on the surface of the desk. He did not look at Viktor when he strode past him, though their shoulders purposefully collided and Viktor stumbled from the force of it.

“Tonight,” Chris said, and wordlessly, Viktor nodded.

* * *

 

There was a steadily emptying bottle of wine on the desk. Phichit had endeavored to begin packing his things, in preparation for the coming days, but somehow had forgotten this in favor of getting drunk. Alone.

He sat on the windowsill, wedging himself between one edge of the window and the other by bracing his socked feet against the opposite wall. He contemplated calling his parents, or Katsuki. He probably shouldn't call Katsuki. What would they talk about? _I’m drunk, and I’m sad. I’m sorry for accusing you of being in love with the man who tried to kill you._

To which Katsuki would say, _What are you drinking?_ And Phichit would grope around on the desks surface, probably fall out of the window and onto the floor for his efforts, then announce miserably that it was a cheap bottle of Vietnamese chardonnay he had bought at that restaurant where he had bought his and Katsuki’s dinner, and that Phichit was hardly a wine connoisseur but it wasn’t very good, and would Katsuki like to come over, just to be miserable together?

And Katsuki Yuuri would hum and Phichit would think he could detect an edge of amusement to the sound, and Yuuri would say, _I’ll bring better wine._

He would bring better wine, and he and Phichit would drink directly from the bottle like they were in university again, and when Phichit said, _I’m scared that I’m going to die_ , Yuuri would be marginally tipsy when he looked him earnestly in the eyes and said, _Not dying hurts more._

Phichit placed one hand against the window glass and scoffed at his hazy reflection. He and Katsuki, comrades, friends, anything other than two unwilling parties in a strictly-business symbiotic relationship? Not likely. Katsuki Yuuri would laugh in his face, were he here and privy to such fantasies. Sure, Katsuki Yuuri needed Phichit, as Phichit needed him, but it was unwise to paint such an arrangement in the colors of fraternity. Katsuki would sooner kill him than save him, and Phichit could not forget it if he hoped to die with any semblance of dignity here.

And still. Phichit fumbled for his phone, leaned over the dark empty space between the windowsill and the desk and snagged the bottle of wine by its neck, then returned it promptly to his lap. And he called Katsuki Yuuri.

* * *

 

Grigori Beskudnikov did not regularly receive guests in his own home. Such privilege was reserved for only his most esteemed peers and benefactors: FSB men (who shouldered their way in, more often than not, and required little invitation to show up on his doorstep at obscene hours of the night), the occasional millionaire wishing to line both their pockets a bit more, and only the richest of Russian crime lords.

Viktor Nikolaevich Nikiforov was the richest of said Russian crime lords, and yet Grigori was not quite keen on allowing him into his home. A bit of embarrassment--as if he was concerned the Beskudnikov mansion would not hold up in beauty nor opulence to the estate on Nevsky--as well as apprehension regarding the nature of the meeting plagued him now.

Nikiforov’s man Giacometti had arranged it; Grigori had possessed few options but to agree to the matter. Now he reconsidered the possible dangers of receiving two of Petersburg’s deadliest men in his home.

In his study, Viktor Nikiforov sat with his legs crossed at the knee, and he regarded Grigori Beskudnikov calmly. Pleasantly, even. The image was unsettling, particularly when one considered that it was August and he was still wearing his gloves.

“Good evening, Grigori,” Nikiforov said serenely, and Beskudnikov dipped his head. Ever gracious, was the Federal Security Service’s top Petersburg man. “We have matters to discuss.”

“We do,” Beskudnikov echoed, though he didn't believe he had anything of import to discuss with Viktor Nikiforov.

Behind Nikiforov, Christophe Giacometti stood silently and regarded Grigory with an indiscernible expression. Beskudnikov had never cared much for the Swiss one. He was too shrewd, smarter than Nikiforov perhaps, and careful enough to keep his personal attachments out of the public eye. Where Nikiforov slipped up, Giacometti never even considered the opportunity of weakness.

Except for this: Grigori saw the way his knuckles whitened when he gripped the back of Nikiforov’s chair, the carefully careless way he watched the latter’s movements, and knew.

_Cut off the snake’s head, and the rest will follow suit_.

The Crispino siblings had been smart, targeting Katsuki those years ago. He had certainly seemed the head snake then, running the cocaine business in Nikiforov’s name, killing in his name. But it was not that simple. Giacometti did not follow Katsuki Yuuri, and he never had. These men were Nikiforov’s, and that was where the FSB would succeed where the Italians had failed.

Nikiforov was the target. Katsuki was only collateral damage.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Did you enjoy Tokyo, Grigori, in the spring? You missed _hanami_ , I regret to say.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tokyo, Grigori. Your last business trip.”

“I haven't been to Tokyo in years.”

“Oh, please don't lie.” Nikiforov smiled. His man removed a hand from the back of his chair and held it without Grigori’s view, which did not bode well. “I’ve been lied to far too often recently to find it endearing anymore.”

Nikiforov tilted his head. “If you wanted me dead, Grigori, there are simpler ways than conspiring with governments in which I've had no involvement for years. It’s worlds easier to kill a man through his window from a nearby roof than it is to drag all these theatrics into it.”

Flatly: “I went to Athens in the spring, Viktor Nikiforov. You were aware of that then, though it seems to have slipped your mind in favor of _theatrics_ now.”

“Of course,” Nikiforov continued placidly. “Of course, unless one is a Kremlin agent in an age which favors letting others do their dirty work, rather than bloody your own hands, right, Grigori?”

Oh, he really didn't want to die. It occurred to Beskudnikov now that he was quite afraid of death.

“What do you want, Nikiforov?” he snarled, rising and going too suddenly for the Glock beneath his desk. The removal of a safety, the metallic click of a handgun’s slide, Giacometti’s gentle, “Stay where you are, please,” stilled him.

“That's all the confirmation I need, Grigori,” Nikiforov said softly, and he smiled. “Though I’d like to ask you a few more questions first.”

Grigori had developed a habit of being careful, after every FSB delegation visited him uninvited, to check his study for wiretaps. (He may have worked for the Service, but that didn't mean he wanted them knowing every aspect of his private business, after all.) He was grateful now for his religiosity in doing so--he would have been frightfully embarrassed, upon next facing his superiors, if they had heard his screams.

* * *

 

When Viktor Nikiforov returned to Nevsky for the night, Katsuki Yuuri was not home.

For a brief moment, Viktor thought this meant he had fled the city, finally, and he was grateful. That mean he would not have to kill him.

But his things were still in his bedroom, his glasses and his best shirts and the most recent of Viktor’s books he had stolen and begun to carry with him everywhere throughout the estate, and it was painful obvious that he had not had the sense of self-preservation to leave. The thought made Viktor’s heart hurt immeasurably.

Viktor sat in the parlor closest to the main entrance, then worried he would not hear him come in and relocated himself to the lowest of the steps on the hall’s grand staircase. When Yuuri did come in, Viktor was so absorbed in the blood beneath his nails that he nearly missed him, regardless.

But he did not miss him because, upon edging closed the door, Yuuri dropped his keys, and he swore in thick, quiet Japanese, and Viktor looked up.

“Yuuri,” Viktor said, and Yuuri blinked and said, “Oh.”

He said, “You weren't home. When I left.” He said, “I didn't know where--where you went.” He said, “I’m sorry.”

Viktor said, “You’re drunk.”

Yuuri carded a rough hand through his hair. The shadows under his eyes had deepened somehow further. “Stole a bottle of cabernet from the kitchens.”

“And where did you go?”

A shrug. His voice was soft. “Out.”

Viktor looked at him for a long moment, and Yuuri tipped his head pensively and returned the examination. He did not flinch when Viktor stood, nor did he backpedal when he strode to him. When Viktor took his wrists in his own hands, Katsuki Yuuri did nothing but tip back his head and blink at him.

Viktor had wanted this to be real, to be honest, so badly that he had missed all the warning signs. Yuuri’s frequent disappearances from the estate, his breakdown at the gala, even his panic over Viktor having his phone stolen months ago--it was all because of this. All because of Beskudnikov, and Fuchū, and the fucking Kremlin too.

Viktor knew by heart now where Yuuri kept that damned switchblade of his, and he knew how easy it would be to steal in this moment, dreamily intoxicated as Yuuri was. He could envision it so _clearly_ : the slip of his fingers into his pocket, the flash of a silver blade, the elegant opening of major arteries which invited the neverending spill of blood.

But Yuuri was still allowing him to touch him. Even more unbelievably, he had closed his eyes, leaned just barely into Viktor, swayed gently against him. He whispered something indiscernible in Japanese against his shoulder.

Viktor Nikiforov lifted a hand by the wrist and pressed Yuuri’s palm to his mouth, then traced the path of a blue, blue vein down the length of his wrist and up his arm, carefully slung Yuuri’s arms around his neck and relocated his mouth to his neck, his shoulder, one rigid collarbone beneath the edge of his sweater.

Yuuri allowed him to do so. His eyelids fluttered, like one caught in a dream, and ever so often he would sigh his name. “Viktor,” as he cradled his head and stroked his cheek and did not reach for the knife. “Viktor. Viktor, Viktor, Viktor.” Over and over and over again, like the syllables were a lifeline and, for fear of drowning beneath some dark wave, he was never going to stop saying them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so the end begins.
> 
> I predict two to three more chapters in this horrible frankensteinian monster to finish it up. there's a lot ahead!
> 
> "odi et amo" means, as one can probably discern if they know any latin or spanish, means generally "I hate and I love." it's from catallus' poem 85.
> 
> as always, thanks for reading, comments, and kudos! xx


	18. Moon in Pieces

When he had put Yuuri to bed (unable as he was to kill him while he was drunk and soft and whispering such gentle indiscernible things into the side of his neck in Japanese), Viktor had stolen his phone.

He hadn't meant to, exactly--the thing had buzzed in Yuuri’s pocket when Viktor had laid him across his own bed, and Yuuri had mumbled sleepily, “My phone,” and when Viktor had pulled it from his back pocket and made to set it on his nightstand, the weight of it had given him pause. It was not the same phone as the one he knew Yuuri carried nowadays, and when he turned it over, the screen glowed with several texts from an unsaved number. He hadn't meant to pocket the thing then, really, but he did mean to walk into the Vladimirsky club after midnight and drop the stolen phone on the card table at which Georgi Popovich was sitting.

“Viktor!” Jean-Jacques Leroy greeted him, drunk and too amiable for Viktor’s tastes. “Long time since seeing you here. Or anywhere, really.”

“Been busy, Leroy,” Viktor replied without looking him in the face. He didn't have time nor patience for JJ Leroy tonight. It was nearly one in the morning.

“Busy?” Leroy laughed. “I’ve heard. Busy getting fucked facedown by--”

Without turning to spare him a glance, Viktor hooked his foot around the leg of Leroy’s chair and upended him rather violently onto the floor. His face struck the edge of the table beneath his eye, and he swore loudly and vehemently. The edge of the table had broken skin on his way down, and he bled steadily from just above his cheek.

“Fucking _Christ_ , Nikiforov, I was _kidding--”_

“Get me into that,” Viktor said to Popovich, nodding at Yuuri’s phone. “And then translate it from Japanese.” Upon facing hesitation in Georgi’s expression: “ _Now_ , Popovich.”

Obviously drunk, Georgi appeared to finally notice the blood still dried beneath Viktor’s nails. He nodded obediently, though his gaze lingered on his hands. “Yes, sir.”

For his part, Viktor Nikiforov gripped Leroy’s upended chair by its back and righted it, then sat in it himself. And then he waited.

* * *

 

It was nighttime, and Phichit Chulanont was sitting in an empty cafe on Vasilyevsky Island when someone slipped into the chair across from him and folded his hands on the tabletop. Phichit Chulanont had been reading--rather, rereading--and the hands were the first thing he saw.

His heart jumped into his mouth, even as he became particularly transfixed by them. Elegant hands, except for the new breakage of skin across the knuckles, the mild scarring across their backs which denoted more than a few unconventional injuries. The left hand was crowned with an engagement ring.

The hands unfolded, spread amicably, and their owner said something quietly in Russian. Now, Phichit looked up.

He said to Christophe Giacometti, third in command of the Plisetsky house, “I’m sorry. I don’t speak Russian.” He spoke Thai, and the timidity of the reply was no act. Phichit Chulanont was terrified.

Giacometti dipped his head. He said, “English, then?” and Phichit worried he hesitated too long before he frowned. Shook his head.

“I don't--”

“Japanese.” The word was English, but Phichit could hardly pretend he didn't know its meaning. Additionally, he flinched too hard at its mention, and that was practically an affirmative answer in itself.

In Japanese, he said, “Yes.” Christophe Giacometti looked to the cover of Yuuri’s book and nodded like he had thought so. Phichit felt sick.

“I’m afraid my Japanese isn’t great,” Giacometti continued pleasantly in English, as if he didn't believe Phichit could not understand it. “But I know someone who would make a wonderful translator.”

“I--”

“Christophe Giacometti.” He offered his hand to shake, and Phichit looked at it as it it might kill him. For all he knew, those hands _could_ kill him, and fairly easily too. “And you’re Phichit Chulanont.”

Oh, he had been so _close_. They both had been. Phichit’s apartment was empty--he had disposed of everything he did not need, and packed the little which he did--in preparation of leaving Russia in the coming days. Even Fuchū had demanded they push up the date, at the last second two days previously, and that had made their job even more simple.

They had been so close to winning. But now they were going to die.

“Yes,” Phichit Chulanont breathed, in English finally, and Christophe Giacometti smiled.

“Wonderful,” he said, and Phichit very much doubted it.

* * *

 

As a final act of uncommon kindness, Yuuri had taken Plisetsky to dinner.

Plisetsky had wanted to drive, in his car of choice, but Yuuri’s altruism did not extend so far as that. They had taken one of Viktor’s BMWs, and Yuuri had driven. He did fill for Yuri Plisetsky perhaps a few too many glasses of wine, however, as apology.

Now he watched Yuri prop his chin on his hand, somewhere deep into the third glass, and withdrew the wine from his place setting furtively. Yuri Plisetsky did not notice.

Instead, he said, “Why did you ever start working for Minako?” and Yuuri dipped his head.

“Bad luck,” he said humorlessly. But then he smiled, just slightly. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a dancer. Minako taught ballet. I suppose I got too swept up in the rest of it along the way.”

“But _how?”_ Yuri reached for the wine, finally appeared to notice its absence, and frowned. “You’ve never said _how.”_

Yuuri shrugged. “I spent a summer in Tokyo. Everyone knew the Okukawa name there, even fifteen years ago, but I was a kid, and I was from out of town.” He smiled. “Hasetsu had never seen yakuza before.”

“Before you,” Plisetsky modified the statement, and Yuuri nodded.

“Before me.”

“And then?” Clearly, the wine had made him talkative. Yuuri didn't think Plisetsky had said this many words to him while sober since his return to Nevsky.

“I met Yuko.” Yuuri tilted his head to the side. “She was already Minako’s by then, and because she was pretty and friendly and older than me…” He spread his hands. Shrugged. “It's easier to fall into things like that than you would think, Yura.”

“You thought she was pretty?”

Yuuri laughed. _“That’s_ what you find hard to believe?”

“Well.” Yuri Plisetsky blushed. “I just--”

“I was thirteen. Yes, I thought she was pretty.” Yuri, out of embarrassment, was still pink in the face. “She’s still pretty now, though I imagine Takeshi wouldn't like to hear me say so.”

“Oh,” Plisetsky said, quietly after a pause, and Yuuri raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

Plisetsky shrugged, looked to his hands. He muttered, “I don't know. I just thought it was--I don't know. Something grander.”

“You thought I decided at thirteen that I wanted to become this? That’s what you imagined?” Yuuri shook his head. His voice had become too sharp, and he softened it. “It was an accident.”

“I don't see how becoming this is an accident.”

Yuuri had finished his own wine. The warmth of it made him generous, and he took no offense at Plisetsky’s apparent disdain for what _this_ was. He closed his eyes.

“It always starts with little things. When I began training with Minako, it was a backpack full of drugs she asked me to take to Shibuya.” He reopened his eyes. Plisetsky was watching him silently. “Asked, not ordered. That was important. Complicity. She couldn't _make_ me do anything back then. Not yet.”

Yuuri shrugged. “But I always knew what I was getting into. I think maybe I just thought, when I was a kid, that it was something one could leave. That I could get bored, or have a moral revelation, or miss my mother, and go back home, no questions asked.” Quietly, he laughed. “Then I turned sixteen, and she had me swallowing millions of yen in cocaine and making monthly trips to Shanghai. And then I was seventeen, and carrying out assassinations and learning Russian and dealing drugs in America. And then I was here.”

“No leaving,” Plisetsky mumbled, and Yuuri shook his head.

“Not with my record,” he said. Plisetsky was looking particularly distressed at this revelation, and so Yuuri molded his tone into something gentler. “I think it could be different for you, Yura. If that’s what you wanted.”

Wide eyes. Stricken expression, fear bleeding into his voice. “Who said that's what I wanted?”

Yuuri dipped his head. “You, weeks ago. Around the same time you totaled Viktor’s car, actually.” At Plisetsky’s yet-widening eyes, he added quietly, “I haven't told anyone.”

“Oh,” Yuri Plisetsky muttered, and some of the panic leached from his face. “Oh. Thank you.”

“Yes.” Had Plisetsky been Viktor, it would have been something to hold over his head. Blackmail, leverage, a favor to be owed. But Yuri Plisetsky was a child, and Yuuri had no quarrel with him alone. Only with his family.

“Your parents still live in Japan?” Plisetsky asked, and Yuuri blinked at him shrewdly. Then he nodded.

“With my sister. In the same house I grew up in.”

“Do you miss them?”

And here was where Yuuri’s generous patience ran thin. He lifted his head and looked right through Yuri Plisetsky. His jaw was tight.

“No,” he said, which of course meant _yes_ , and Plisetsky stared down at his plate.

“Oh,” he said, and again. “I’m sorry. Oh.” 

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov prided himself on being charming even in the direst of times. All but his charisma had failed him too often to risk trusting another talent with his life. So frequently lately, being charming was all he had.

Try as he might, he was not charming now.

For fear of inevitably getting blood on the carpets of his favorite rooms, he had instructed Christophe to bring Katsuki Yuuri’s young informant to an abandoned study on the second floor. Viktor thought it may have been Nikolai’s once, or maybe not; regardless, it had fallen into disuse after his murder.

“I’m sorry,” he said now, aiming for charisma and only barely achieving scraping, ill-concealed rage. “I don't believe we ever had proper introductions, the last time you were in my home.”

“I know who you are,” the man said quietly, though he would not look at Viktor. His head dropped forward, like maybe Mila had hit him too hard, and his dark hair concealed from Viktor his eyes. “So really, there's no need.”

Mouth thinning, Viktor lifted his chin. “Phichit Chulanont.”

“See?” A bit of a smile to his voice. “You know me too. On our way to being fast friends.”

“Sir,” Mila Babicheva said, in Russian, and when Viktor waved a dismissive hand, she hooked her fingers in Chulanont’s hair and wrenched back his head. The sound he made was involuntary and pained, but his expression simply seemed embarrassed at having given them both the satisfaction of knowing it had hurt him. He was Yuuri’s man, most certainly. The Japanese he spoke next, quick and venomous, was further proof.

“What did you say?” Mila yanked his head again, until his neck was pinned against the back of the chair and she could look him in the face even from behind. “Tell me what you said.”

Phichit Chulanont repeated what he had said, this time in a language which was presumably Thai.

“You _fucking--”_ And the knives were out, flashing, and Viktor would not have protested except that it was too much, too early. He didn't want Chulanont dead before he had even managed to tell them anything.

“Mila,” he said sharply, and the woman’s head snapped up so Viktor could see how she smiled. She had already sliced open a long red ribbon in Chulanont’s cheek, and blood trickled freely past his jaw. His eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell too quickly for the calm he so clearly wanted to project.

“Yes, sir,” she said prettily, and removed the butterfly knife from where she held it beneath Chulanont’s right eye. “Of course, sir.”

“I’m sorry,” Chulanont said quietly, eyes still closed. Mila still had her hand fisted viciously in his hair. His voice wavered as if he was near tears. “That was out of line.”

“Keep your temper,” Viktor reproached Mila in Russian. “Or I’ll have Chris take your place.”

Mila Babicheva exhaled irritably, blowing an errant piece of red hair out of her face. But she let Chulanont go. His head dropped to his chest quickly, but he caught himself before tumbling too quickly forward and falling out of the chair. After a moment of steeling himself, he lifted his head so he could look Viktor Nikiforov in the face.

“I don't understand,” he muttered. Viktor sat on the surface of Nikolai’s desk and tilted his head to the side.

“Understand what?” he asked pleasantly.

Phichit Chulanont shook his head. Laughed, breathless. The steady drip of blood from the gash in his face had quickened its pace, and there was blood in his mouth now. He made a face at the slick feeling of it on his teeth. “I don't know.”

_“Viktor,”_ Mila whined. She had grown bored. A want for more blood had come alight in her eyes, since making her first cuts in Chulanont.

Now, Viktor Nikiforov remembered himself. Crossed his legs and placed one palm against the surface of the desk and leaned casually to the right. He thought perhaps looking pretty might make up for his current lack of charm.

He said to Phichit Chulanont, “How do you know Katsuki Yuuri?” and when Chulanont said quietly, “I don’t,” Viktor dipped his head. There was a flash of steel. Viktor was grateful he had possessed the foresight to spare his expensive carpets of the blood.

* * *

 

Yuuri was driving when the Fuchū phone buzzed in his pocket, and though he would normally not possess the stupidity to retrieve such a thing in front of Yuri Plisetsky, something made him answer it.

The message was from the unsaved number Yuuri had come to recognize over these few months as Phichit Chulanont’s. The text read: _come home please._

In his palm, the phone buzzed again. The second text read: _now_.

Katsuki Yuuri blinked. Something cold and unpleasant tightened in his chest.

Yuri Plisetsky snapped, “Red _light,”_ and Yuuri slammed on the brakes.

_“Shit,”_ he said, his heart in his throat too suddenly, and he panted, “I’m sorry.”

He kept his gaze on the traffic light then, but he did not miss the curious glance Plisetsky shot him. The kid said, “Whatever,” and Yuuri nodded stiffly.

The light changed, and Katsuki Yuuri said, “Yuri. I can’t take you home. Something’s come up.”

“Something,” Plisetsky echoed, like the word meant more to him than Yuuri had intended. His gaze flickered quietly to Yuuri’s phone, still in his hand. “Yeah. Whatever. Take me there instead.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri whispered, and the city lights of downtown Petersburg painted the world outside into a nightmarish, fluorescent blur.

* * *

 

Phichit didn't think he’d ever bled this much before. Even the time he’d fallen blackout drunk out of a window at a college party and cracked open his head on some paving stones seemed insubstantial when faced with the sheer amount of blood loss he was experiencing now. He was beginning to miss the major concussion and twenty stitches he’d received then, which was never something he imagined he would ever stoop so low in life as to think.

He flinched when the hands touched his face, but this time their designs were not unkind. A damp cloth wiped away some of the less stubborn blood, pulled a bit painfully at the damaged bits of his face. Phichit’s first thought was _Yuuri_.

But it wasn’t Yuuri. Viktor Nikiforov said pleasantly, “Your cheek is going to scar.”

Phichit Chulanont flinched. Nikiforov had steadied the woozy tilt of Phichit’s head with his left hand, and he used it as an opportunity to hold him still now.

“Don’t. You’ll reopen them all.” The various cuts, bruises, and other marks of new ownership Mila Babicheva and company had left on his body, he meant. “And I still need you conscious, so you need to keep the rest of your blood.”

“Considerate of you,” Phichit mumbled, and though his vision swam he thought Nikiforov nodded.

“Yes,” he agreed quietly. Then he said, “You're going to die for him, and you don't even appear to be angry about the fact.”

“I’m angry,” Phichit whispered, and it was true. He was furious, because this was not how things were supposed to go, this was not how the plan had been made, and the plan had been _perfect_. “I’m very angry. But not at him.”

“Considerate of you,” Nikiforov echoed, and Phichit made a face.

“Yes.”

Nikiforov gripped his face suddenly, the bruised parts of his jaw, and the sound Phichit made was quietly distressed. Though he had expected it. It had been too long since they had hurt him, and he had imagined he was overdue for something.

“He has a talent for that, you know,” Nikiforov said casually. Behind him, Phichit caught a glimpse of Mila Babicheva, designated torturer of the Plisetsky house, sulking on the sofa. “Making you forgive him. Doesn't mean he deserves it.”

Had he possessed mobility of his own jaw, Phichit might have protested that that wasn't what this was. That he didn't forgive Katsuki Yuuri because he found something about him irresistibly forgivable, or even because he liked him at all. That he forgave him because Katsuki Yuuri was guilty of many things, but this was not one of them.

Or maybe, Phichit thought, he wouldn't have said anything at all. He was so tired. Couldn't they just kill him already?

Perhaps he had expressed the final sentiment aloud, because Viktor Nikiforov laughed. He said, “Oh, there's time for that still, Phichit Chulanont,” and then Yuuri came home.

* * *

 

It had taken quite a bit of lying to keep Yuri Plisetsky from pursuing him, once they arrived at the house on Nevsky. For better or worse, Yuuri had settled on a story which involved an old friend from Japan planning to visit, but arriving unwell. He was in Viktor’s company now, and that could sort of explain the way Yuuri, upon finding Georgi Popovich in the hallway, grabbed him by the collar and, pinning him viciously to the wall, snapped, “Where is Viktor?”

Popovich’s eyes widened. He greeted breathlessly, “Katsuki,” but when Yuuri tightened his grip on his throat, he gasped, “Nikolai’s study.”

“Stay here,” Katsuki Yuuri snarled to Plisetsky, and when he let Popovich go, the man slid wide-eyed and gasping to the floor. Yuuri concerned himself no longer with either of them.

When he stepped foot in Nikolai Plisetsky’s repurposed old study, he did so calmly. He regarded Viktor Nikiforov with a cool expression, and Phichit Chulanont with an unimpressed one. There was a good amount of blood soaking the latter’s collar.

He ignored Mila Babicheva altogether, though he did make note of her location.

“Viktor,” Yuuri greeted simply, and from his place crouched before Chulanont, Viktor Nikiforov stood. Upon seeing Yuuri, Phichit Chulanont said, “Oh.”

“You did receive my texts, then,” Viktor said. Phichit’s blood was drying brown-red in the creases of his palms. “I had started to worry I’d judged the situation too rashly.”

“Jumping to conclusions and hurting the wrong people? You’ve never done that.” The wry response seemed out of place here and now, though it had sounded fitting in his head. Yuuri wondered how much blood Chulanont had lost by now. “Can I--”

Viktor blinked. Then, surprisingly, he stepped aside, allowing Yuuri to kneel tentatively before Chulanont. Yuuri’s shoulders tensed at turning his back and getting on his knees before Viktor Nikiforov and Mila Babicheva--poor strategy, as far as avoiding a bullet in the back of the head would go. But perhaps there were greater matters at hand.

He spoke Japanese, and he said, “Phichit. Can you see me? Recognize me? Phichit.” Careful not to be too tender with him, with Nikiforov as his audience, Yuuri tilted upward Phichit Chulanont’s chin. Repeated softly, “Phichit. I’m sorry he hurt you.”

A flicker of movement behind his eyelids, and Phichit Chulanont smiled woozily. Said in English, though perhaps he had intended for Japanese, “Your boyfriend’s a real asshole, Katsuki.”

“Mm.” Yuuri stood. “You’re fine for the moment, then.” If he could afford snark, regardless in what language, he could afford a few more minutes. Yuuri turned to Viktor Nikiforov.

“Please don’t touch my employees,” Yuuri said quietly, and behind him Phichit Chulanont laughed. “I’ve warned you against this before.”

“He’s not your employee,” Viktor Nikiforov said, as if offended that Yuuri would think him so stupid as to believe such a thing. “And please don't insult me.”

Yuuri’s eyes narrowed. He said, “I had no intention of doing so,” as his hand crept subtly to his lapel. Viktor’s gaze followed the movement softly, and he smiled. Yuuri withdrew his hand to his side. From her silent place on the sofa, Mila toyed with a recently-used knife and scowled.

“He had this with him.” At the desk, now, Viktor lifted something from the surface. A book. “I’d forgotten about this.”

Katsuki Yuuri hadn’t forgotten. He also didn't look at Phichit accusingly, didn't snarl _idiot_ , didn't snap _you're going to get us all killed over a fucking book,_ though he wanted to do all these things. He watched Viktor Nikiforov in a frightened sort of paralysis now.

_“...And to his talk to the moon he often adds that of all things in the world, he most hates his immortality and his unheard-of fame.”_ Viktor looked up. “That used to make me think of you. That line.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Mm. No.” Viktor Nikiforov set down the book. “In retrospect, I can’t either.”

Bored, Mila scoffed. Said, “If it were up to the two of you, nothing would ever get done, you _talk_ so goddamn much--”

“You didn't escape Fuchū on your own,” Viktor Nikiforov spoke over her. Yuuri smiled, bowed shortly and insincerely.

“I’m flattered you believed for so long that I could have.” Yuuri tilted his head. “I didn't escape at all.”

“No.” Viktor’s mouth twitched. “And to think I had almost been impressed.”

“Don’t flatter me.” Without turning his head nor breaking his gaze with Viktor Nikiforov, Katsuki Yuuri pitched his voice softer and asked in Japanese, “Can you stand?”

“Stop that.” Mila jumped up from the sofa, and she scowled. “Speak Russian or not at all.”

Again, softly, Phichit Chulanont laughed. There was a pause, and then he said--loudly, for Mila’s sake, but his meaning for Yuuri alone-- _“Hai.”_

Yuuri nodded. From behind the late Nikolai Plisetsky’s desk, Viktor Nikiforov smiled.

And what followed was the end of a dynasty.

* * *

 

In her office in Kabukicho, Okukawa Minako looked up.

Except for herself, the room was empty. It was frequently empty nowadays, and more often devoid of ones she could call friends. Katsuki Yuuri had sat across from her months ago, sharp and cold and exactly how she had taught him to be years previously. Somehow, then, she had regretted seeing him so. There had been something missing from his face, something which had always made him _himself_ and which had thus convinced Okukawa Minako that he would take Tokyo to lengths and heights she could not.

She had been so proud of what he was, before Fuchū. Proud that she had created something so starkly beautiful, so terrifyingly ruthless. Katsuki Yuuri was her monster. She had owned every millimeter of him.

Until Russia. Until Nikiforov took him to bed, until Minako ordered him to do the very job she had sent him to carry out, until Yuuri told her for the first time in years _no. I won’t_. Then he hadn't been hers, but someone else’s.

There was no satisfaction in an _I told you so._ She thought there might have been, before he came to her doorstep in May, thought the quip would vindicate something within her and make him angry and she _wanted_ him angry. Yuuri was always best when he was angry.

But instead, back in May, she had embraced him. He had allowed her to do so.

And she had known, had _felt_ five years ago when he had stopped being hers. When she had called Yuuri back to Tokyo to punish him for disobeying her, there had been a dreaminess to everything he did. Even when Okukawa Minako had bruised his ribs, he had sat on the floor and tilted his face upward and when he wrapped them in gauze he had been somewhere else, in his mind. It had been so _obvious_.

And Minako could not plead concern for his feelings, nor selfless motivation for discouraging what Katsuki Yuuri had fostered between himself and the Russian. But she had known, more or less, what would come of it. That, too, had been obvious.

_Perhaps it will teach him not to disobey me,_ she had said then, and Nishigori Yuko had pleaded, _Minako. Don’t be cruel._

But she couldn’t not be. Minako had taught them both cruelty, and it was one of the few things the master still did better than her pupils.

And she had watched him from the papers, the television broadcasts, and when the breaking news had been _Japanese Drug Kingpin Arrested in Barcelona,_ Minako had said, “I told him so.” Nishigori Yuko--who had not quite been Nishigori yet, though even childless Minako could tell by the way she had carried herself that she was pregnant--had stood from the table and walked out.

Nishigori had been here, in her office, weeks earlier. It was the first time she had returned to Kabukicho willingly in three years, and Minako had not embraced her.

She had offered her tithes from her work in Kyoto, then bargained a fraction of influence over the fighting business she ran in the south. Minako had declined, and she had said, “You have daughters now, don't you, Yuko? Perhaps you could spare one.”

She thought Yuko might have killed her, in that moment. It had been a long time since she had seen that fire in her expression, and it had made Minako smile.

Thus, Nishigori Yuko became an Okukawa again. Though, of course, try as she might have to clear herself of the name, she had never really been anything else.

It was late, nearly four in the morning. Behind Minako, visible through the floor-length window of her office, the club was empty.

Okukawa Minako stood, turned off the lights, and retired to bed.

* * *

 

The events that followed passed like subsequent things, though Yuuri knew there was no way that they could not have happened all at once.

Viktor Nikiforov pulled a gun from beneath Nikolai’s desk, removed the safety. Aimed it levelly at Yuuri, and yet didn't pull the trigger. He was better than a fair shot.

Mila Babicheva made for Phichit Chulanont, even as the latter tried to stand and stumbled, went to his knees and Babicheva’s fingers missed his scalp by centimeters. She snarled, designed to grab him again from over the back of the chair.

And Yuuri moved, not toward Viktor and not to arm himself, but to Babicheva, wrapping one arm up and around her throat, pinning her against him, the other around her torso so she could not use her hands. She snarled, made as if to throw him off, but Yuuri was cutting off nearly all oxygen from her windpipe, and she managed little but a cough.

“No,” Yuuri said softly, soothingly, as her fingers spasmed and she sought out a new knife from her pockets. Yuuri still had her wrists pinned to her own sides, and it was fairly simple to pry the weapon from her hand in this position. “Give me that. Thank you.”

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Let her go,” and Yuuri pressed his forearm further against Mila Babicheva’s trachea. She squirmed at first, then when he applied hard pressure to a tender place on her neck, swayed heavily against him.

Yuuri said, “Then put the gun down.”

“Like hell.”

“I’ll break her neck.”

“And then I’ll kill you.” How quickly they had reached a stalemate. Yuuri smiled.

“I don't think you could,” he said, and Viktor sneered.

“Try me,” he spat. Yuuri tilted his head.

“Do you really care about her so much?” Mila was gasping now, and Yuuri took a fraction of pity on her and unwound his arm from around her torso. Her hands flew to her throat immediately, her fingers scrabbling to pry his arm from around her neck, but if she could ever have matched Yuuri even marginally for strength she couldn't any longer. Lack of oxygen had ensured that. “I suppose she’s pretty. More trouble than she’s worth though, isn't she?”

Viktor Nikiforov said nothing. Yuuri smiled. “Though I was pretty and troublesome too, I suppose. You have a soft spot for those types.”

“I should have killed you years ago,” Viktor snarled, and Yuuri said, “Yes.”

Silence, a moment of hesitation on Viktor’s part. His gaze flickered to Phichit Chulanont, on his hands and knees and still gasping on the floor, and Yuuri sought to avoid a double hostage situation with distraction. Playfully, Yuuri tilted his head. “Come out from behind the desk if you're going to be making threats, Vitya.” Narrowed his eyes. “If you pretend to be brave, maybe once I’ll actually believe them.”

And Viktor Nikiforov was stupid when the matter was of pride, and so he stepped out from behind Nikolai Plisetsky’s desk.

“I want to know first,” Viktor said softly as he did so, taking one, two, three quiet steps to Katsuki Yuuri. “Were you on their side this whole time?”

Finally, Mila Babicheva’s fingers slipped away from her neck, and she went limp against him. Yuuri kept his arm slung against her throat still, as an unconscious precaution against Viktor Nikiforov.

“They offered me freedom,” Yuuri said, just as softly. The response was carefully ambiguous. “It was more than you’d ever given me, Vitenka.”

“Oh.” A flicker of something--anger, or embarrassment, or perhaps hurt--across his face. But his voice was velvet. His gaze was hypnotic. Horribly, it softened something in Yuuri’s chest. “Don’t be cruel, Yuuri.”

_Focus_. He couldn't afford to let himself be entranced by this, to slip up even for a moment. Humiliated as he was now for having been fooled for so long, Viktor would have no qualms about killing Yuuri anymore. Yuuri had done the unforgivable in making him look stupid these past months, and Viktor was least kind when he had something to prove.

And yet.

There was still a part of Yuuri that was in love with him, despite his best judgment, and that part of Yuuri was quickly working over his sense of survival. This was the part of him that made tipping up his chin so goddamn thoughtless, the part of him that let the body of Mila Babicheva slip from against his chest into Viktor’s arms without so much as a protest. It was the part of him that made his mouth turn soft when he whispered, _“Never,”_ as quiet and lovely and damned as the rest of him.

It was the part of him that was surprised when Viktor Nikiforov dipped his head downward and, rather than kiss his begging open mouth, gripped him fiercely by the hair and wrenched back his head.

The rest of Yuuri, however, was not surprised. The rest of Yuuri reacted.

There was no Mila between them to hinder movement anymore, and this close it was unlikely Viktor would risk shooting him, and these factors opened up a new realm of possibilities to Katsuki Yuuri.

Viktor had Yuuri’s face in his hands, his head yanked back and his rabbit’s pulse in his neck exposed, and it would certainly be easy to slit Yuuri’s throat like this. Like Viktor had threatened in the library months ago, like Yuuri had dreamt of for so long. Yuuri wouldn't let it come to that.

He still had Mila Babicheva’s knife, and he used it to clumsily open up the fabric beneath Nikiforov’s lapel. The cut into flesh itself didn't venture much deeper, since Yuuri was dizzy and hurting and not at a feasible angle to kill him even if that had been his design, but the sudden pain still surprised Viktor Nikiforov. It still made him let him go.

He hissed, “That's hardly _fair_ , Yuuri,” and Yuuri was moving again.

He kept the knife, but the next time Yuuri hit him it was with his other hand, in a sharp backhand that made Viktor blink. Step backwards, and sway just enough to Yuuri had time to catch his breath. Then Viktor hit him back.

Viktor was strong, had always been stronger than he looked, even, and Yuuri felt all the air leave his lungs in one gasp. Viktor had hit him in the sternum, but Yuuri felt the blow in his entire chest cavity, and he nearly went to the floor from the pain of it. He doubled over, and Viktor used this opening to hit him in the kidneys, and then grab him by the back of his collar and haul him to a standing position, and Yuuri was getting his _ass_ kicked wasn't he--

“You know,” Viktor said to his face, though Yuuri found he could not focus his gaze well enough on his features that he would have known it from vision alone, “I had just started to think we were getting along again, Yura.”

Katsuki Yuuri floundered for oxygen, and then he laughed. Viktor hit him so hard across the face that his sight temporarily left him, and when it bestowed itself upon him next Yuuri found himself on his hands and knees.

“You put a bullet in me,” he gasped, his vision swimming. He couldn't have counted the fingers on his two hands in that moment, had he been asked to. His brain wasn't working in any capacity except that it kept helpfully reminding him how much he _hurt_.

“Yes.” A swift kick to his stomach. Yuuri closed his eyes. “And I’m about to do it again. Where would you like it, Katsuki Yuuri?”

“Viktor,” Yuuri began, and it was the best he could manage. He wasn't sure if the blood in his mouth was from a bitten tongue or something a bit more serious and internal. He supposed it didn't matter now anyway.

_Please_ , Yuuri thought now, as if Viktor could read his thoughts. As if a confession would make it all better. _This wasn't the plan. This wasn't what I wanted. Please--_

Hands on his shoulders, and someone was hauling him to his feet. Not kindly, but not with any apparent intention to harm him with such an action, either. Quietly, Viktor said, “It’s no fun seeing you on your knees if you’re not going to beg, Yura.”

Panting: “I won’t--”

“You will.” Viktor gripped his jaw tightly enough, it seemed to Yuuri, to shatter it. Yuuri flinched. “I’ll make you.”

“No.”

Viktor Nikiforov laughed. His fingers slipped gently, almost sensually, from his jaw down the length of his throat. Yuuri closed his eyes and was not surprised when Viktor’s grip tightened on his windpipe and quite efficiently cut off his breathing. Yuuri did not reward him with a gasp.

“I suspected for a long time,” Viktor said quietly. “But I had just started to believe you, in these past weeks. I wanted so badly to win you over again, fix what I’d done to you, and this whole time--”

His tone had changed, his volume risen, and he paused. Yuuri thought perhaps there was a thin smile to his voice. “I really do want you to beg, Katsuki Yuuri. Could you please?”

_Stay awake_. He was slipping, already. His blood rushed furiously in his ears, and the lines of Viktor’s face began to dissolve into soft impressionist colors. Yuuri wanted to say _please_.

“Let go.” Not his voice, not his words, not what he had been about to gasp with his final lungful of oxygen. Katsuki Yuuri was confused, until he heard the metallic click of a gun’s safety and remembered. Phichit Chulanont. He had Viktor’s own handgun cocked and flush against the base of his skull. “Now.”

Annoyed, but still looking less than terrified, Viktor Nikiforov let him go.

Now, finally, Yuuri gasped. Nearly went to his knees again, before he caught himself and only swayed. Viktor Nikiforov looked at him with an incredible measure of disdain and raised his hands cautiously to his head.

“What does it say that you need a half-dead cop’s help to beat me in a fight now, Yura?” he taunted softly in English. “I have to confess, I’m a bit disappointed.”

Yuuri didn't dignify such a thing with a response. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth; he felt blood there, or perhaps simply the memory of it. Quietly, he said, “That’s enough. You’ve lost.”

“So now what?” Viktor lifted his chin. “You execute me? Or turn me over to the FSB like some petty drug runner? Does being a police dog satisfy your need for revenge, Katsuki Yuuri?”

“That’s enough,” he repeated. Yuuri’s hands were shaking, and he could not be sure if it was with fear or anger. “That’s enough.”

“Is it?” The wicked lines of his mouth only sharpened when Yuuri drew his own gun and leveled it between Viktor Nikiforov’s eyes. “You wouldn’t, Yura.” Velvet in his voice again. This time, Yuuri did not act as if it swayed him.

“Let Chulanont cuff you,” Yuuri replied coldly. “And I won’t.”

And so Viktor Nikiforov let Phichit Chulanont cuff him. He hissed something soft and vile which made the younger man flinch only once; Yuuri ignored the transgression. He stepped around Mila Babicheva on his way to the door. Phichit Chulanont pushed Viktor Nikiforov carefully along behind him.

And in that brief moment they were almost, almost free. Yuuri had almost made it, succeeded, escaped Nevsky and Saint Petersburg and Russia with his head--and Phichit Chulanont’s too--when the door to Nikolai Plisetsky’s study opened again.

And Yuri Plisetsky, sixteen and angry and doomed heir to a crumbling throne, said, “Katsuki Yuuri,” and Katsuki Yuuri paused.

He paused because Yuri Plisetsky was armed, with the same Glock that Katsuki Yuuri had taught him to use in the past month, and Yuuri was so close to surviving that he found he did not want to flirt anymore with death.

Katsuki Yuuri said, “Yura.”

“I knew it.” Admirably, his hands hardly shook with the gun in them. Even if his voice trembled enough for the rest of him. “I knew it, I knew it, you’re a _goddamn_ traitor--”

“Yura.” Soft, soothing, penitent enough to make Plisetsky look him in the eyes. “I’m no traitor.”

He saw in his expression, in the childish twist to his mouth that meant he was fiercely refusing to cry, in the betrayed glint to his eyes, that Yuri Plisetsky wanted to believe him. Katsuki Yuuri risked a step closer.

The handgun, which had begun to drift thoughtlessly off-target, was level on him again. “Don’t come near me,” Yuri Plisetsky spat, and Katsuki nodded. Raised his hands where Yuri could see them, and thus know Katsuki Yuuri meant him no immediate harm.

“I’m sorry, Yura,” Katsuki Yuuri murmured. “But this isn't--”

“Shut up.” Now, finally, his hands began to shake. Yuuri worried moreso about an accidental firing of the Glock than he did Plisetsky actually trying and succeeding to kill him. The former was more likely than the latter situation ever would be. “Shut up, or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Katsuki Yuuri said, “You’ve never killed anyone before, Yura.” Even if he hadn't known it by Plisetsky’s own confession, it would have been easy to discern from the trembling of his mouth, the uncertain list of his steadying arm. “You don’t want to begin with me.”

“Who says?” Plisetsky snapped. Yuuri dipped his head.

“The first man I killed was a stranger,” he said calmly, “and it was still the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Yuri Plisetsky barked a desperate laugh. “Well, I’m not you.”

“No,” Yuuri agreed. “You’re not.”

Subtly, Yuuri turned his head. Viktor Nikiforov strangely ventured to say nothing during their exchange, and looked nearly droll. There was nothing in his expression that communicated that he expected a sixteen-year-old who had never shot a man before to save him, nor that he had any intention to plead for it. When he caught Yuuri looking, he gave a small shrug, and the nonchalance was clearly mocking.

“Yuri,” Katsuki Yuuri said quietly. “Let me go.”

_Or I’ll make you_. The unspoken threat there was easily translatable.

“No.” Something, a flicker in his gaze or a twitch to his fingers, made Yuuri reevaluate the reason for Viktor Nikiforov’s smug surety. His eyes widened and he snapped, _“Down,”_ unsure whether it was in Russian or Japanese, and then he was yanking Viktor Nikiforov by the collar down to the floor with him and above them after the silenced gun went off, Phichit Chulanont was saying, “Fuck, fuck, _fuck--”_

More quietly, Yuri Plisetsky said, “Oh.” Katsuki Yuuri tipped up his gaze and blinked, and then he stood fast and fluidly enough to catch the Plisetsky heir when he began to fall.

“Show me where it is,” Yuuri urged in a low voice. He braced one hand between Plisetsky’s shoulders, used the other to card blindly through the fabric of his jacket, seeking blood. “Yura. Where did it hit you?”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck--”

“For god’s sake, Phichit, shut up,” Yuuri snapped, and when Viktor Nikiforov began to speak he added in sharp Russian, _“You_ stay silent too.”

Sixteen-year-old Yuri Plisetsky panted, and he mumbled, “Hurts.”

“Yes. I know that.” With his free hand Yuuri gripped Plisetsky’s arm too tightly, aiming perhaps to give him an shake to communicate the urgency of the situation, and Plisetsky hissed. When Yuuri withdrew his left hand, it came away slick and wet.

Despite himself, Katsuki Yuuri couldn't help but spare a quiet laugh.

“You’ll be okay, Yura.” The bullet, at least, hadn’t shattered bone in his upper arm. The wound was a bit high, compared to where Yuuri’s own had been, but the picture was very much the same. Katsuki Yuuri’s fingers twitched. “Look at me. Hey, look at me. There. Thank you.”

To Phichit Chulanont, Yuuri said, “Get Viktor off the floor,” an order to which Nikiforov must have taken offense because his next words were a disdainful, “Don't touch me. I’ve got it.” Though, without functional use of either of his hands, he very clearly didn't have it, and while Phichit Chulanont hauled him to his feet regardless of his protests, Katsuki Yuuri kept his eyes on Plisetsky.

“You're going to be fine, Yura. This won’t kill you.” It wouldn't. Yuuri wouldn't allow it to. “But you are losing a lot of blood. I need you to--hey. Look at me.”

“Shit, I’m trying--” Even bleeding out, slipping in and out of brief consciousness, he was petulant. Yuuri spoke firmly over him.

“I’m going to pick you up,” he said. “And I’m going to carry you. Do you have any objections to that?”

“M’sorry,” Yuri Plisetsky mumbled, and he swayed more deeply now. He didn't appear to have processed Yuuri’s question. “I thought--I thought that you were--”

When his eyes rolled back into his head and his legs gave out from beneath him, Katsuki Yuuri anticipated it. He caught him around the waist, taking care not to inflict further damage on his arm. Then he turned, tipping his chin silently upward at Viktor Nikiforov. It was maybe a challenge, or maybe proof.

“You have his blood on your face,” Viktor said, and his voice was quite calm.

* * *

Things had gone horribly wrong. Phichit Chulanont felt overwhelmingly as if he might throw up.

This was unfortunate, because he was driving. Katsuki Yuuri was snapping road directions whenever necessary, but he was much too preoccupied with the child bleeding out in the back and the world’s most wanted criminal kicking the back of the passenger seat to do more than that. There was blood all over his hands: Phichit’s, Plisetsky’s, and Nikiforov’s too.

They had stolen a white BMW from the Nikiforov estate. Yuuri had shoved Phichit into the left side without inquiring his feelings on being the getaway driver; Phichit hadn't thought to protest.

After he had pulled the car from the garage--Nikiforov drawling something in mocking Russian, presumably about the way Phichit drove his car--Yuuri had withdrawn a knife. He shrugged off his jacket quite efficiently, and then he said, “Where is it?”

Phichit cast an apprehensive glance at the knife. “What?”

“Tokyo’s microchip,” Yuuri snapped, as if Phichit was insufferably stupid for not having known immediately what he had meant. He hooked the blade under a fold of fabric and cut a large slit in the arm of a shirt that had probably cost more money than Phichit Chulanont made in a month. “Right arm?”

“Uh--”

“Take care with your answer, because I’m only slicing myself open once, Phichit.”

“Uh--” He didn't _know_. It wasn’t as if Phichit had been the one to put it in him. “Right bicep, I think? It’s _your_ arm, shouldn't _you_ know--”

“Fuck off.” The sound of more fabric tearing, and then Katsuki’s teeth snapped together and severed his pained gasp. The cords of his neck were tight as he presumably dug around the flesh of his upper arm for Fuchū’s tracking chip. Phichit was grateful he had an excuse to keep his eyes on the road while Yuuri did so.

“Found it.” Katsuki Yuuri held it up briefly for Phichit to see, a moderately sized metallic thing as slick with red as his fingers, and then he rolled down the window and threw it out onto the busy street.

Phichit said, “Jesus.” In his eagerness to look elsewhere, he cast his gaze to the rearview mirror and met blue eyes. Phichit blinked.

Yuuri had uncuffed one of Viktor Nikiforov’s wrists--the left one--so he could keep still Plisetsky’s body laid across the two seats beside him, and cuffed his right hand to the inside of the vehicle. Phichit thought one free hand was one too many to go unrestrained and unaccounted for--he had witnessed himself Viktor Nikiforov nearly choke the life from Katsuki Yuuri with one hand, after all--but his reservations on the matter had gone ignored.

Phichit was the first to look away. As he did, Nikiforov said softly, “What did you just do?”

“Give me your phone.” This was to Phichit; Katsuki did not acknowledge Nikiforov’s question. When Phichit handed over his phone, Katsuki again rolled down the BMW’s window and tossed it onto the highway. Shortly after followed both phones on Katsuki’s person, and then Katsuki Yuuri turned and finally addressed Viktor Nikiforov. “Give me your phone.”

Angry Russian which Phichit assumed could best be summarized in an indignant _I don't think so_. Pointedly, Katsuki Yuuri rolled up the window. Said in English, “Give me your phone.”

Viktor Nikiforov gave him his phone.

“That's a mess,” he remarked derisively of Yuuri’s red left hand. Yuuri turned his attention silently to Viktor’s phone, dialing in a number without comment. When he put the device to his ear, a bit of blood smearing on the back of the phone, he said simply, “Yuko.”

* * *

 

Nishigori Yuko loved Katsuki Yuuri. He was her brother in everything, even in blood, and though they did not share mothers or fathers, they had both endured Okukawa Minako’s tutelage, and the bond formed in such violence was in many ways stronger than that forged by parents anyway.

When the white BMW pulled up and Katsuki Yuuri got out of the passenger side, Yuko went to him. Flung her arms about him and began to speak, to scold, when Yuuri hissed. Yuko felt dampness on her cheek and swiped at it, found her fingertips painted with blood.

And she hissed too: _“Bastard,”_ and then she was wrenching open the back of the four-door, and Katsuki Yuuri’s hands on her shoulders were all that kept her from pulling Viktor Nikiforov out of the backseat and killing him.

“The blood is my fault,” Yuuri told her.

“And the rest of it?” Yuko had not missed the bruising across his cheek, against his throat. She was not _stupid_.

Yuuri smiled wryly. “Larger problems at hand.”

Right. The kid bleeding out from a gunshot wound in the arm for trying to shoot Yuuri in the chest. Yuko wondered, not for the first time, what Yuuri saw in any of these goddamn Russians.

She nodded. Still, she opened the second door more forcefully than necessary, and Viktor Nikiforov--who was still cuffed to the inside of the door--was nearly yanked out onto the tarmac with it.

Yuko said, “I thought we had an agreement, Nikiforov.”

“Nishigori.” He looked surprised. Perhaps he was the stupid one. “He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

“Get out.”

Nikiforov raised his restrained arm as high as the metal around his wrist would allow. “I would love to, my dear.”

More doors slammed, and a battered third party looked at her from over the roof of the car. Phichit Chulanont looked worse for wear than Katsuki Yuuri did--there was medical tape holding together a considerable portion of his cheek--and yet he still seemed cheerier when he said, “Oh. Hello.”

Yuko smiled--a genuine smile. “Hello,” she greeted warmly. The two of them had never met, but Yuko already preferred the cop to Nikiforov. Funny how things like that happened.

Phichit Chulanont raised a hand in which he held a ring of keys and made eye contact with Yuuri. He made as if to toss the keys over the BMW; miscalculation in distance and target meant Yuuri had to nearly dive to catch them. He made a face.

“Sorry.” Chulanont shrugged, grimaced. “Think I’m a bit concussed.”

“And you _drove?”_ Yuko looked sharply to Yuuri, who shrugged. Phichit Chulanont saluted her jauntily.

“Morons,” Yuko muttered, but it was almost affectionate. She accepted without protest when Yuuri handed her the keys.

“I’ve got the kid,” he said, serious again. From halfway within the car, Viktor Nikiforov nodded. When he lifted his arm again for Yuko to uncuffed him, there was no jest nor bravado to the action. He would not meet her gaze.

“You don't deserve this,” Yuko hummed, lightly and softly enough that Yuuri would not hear. “I especially don't appreciate the new bruises.”

“I didn't know,” Nikiforov murmured, and maybe it was true. Yuko didn't care.

“Whatever.” Yuko took the empty handcuffs with her. She would keep them, and their key; the fob to the BMW she would give to Hikaru to dispose of the vehicle. The last thing she--or Okukawa Minako--wanted was the Russian Federal Security Service on their ass because of a few white boys’ penchants for fast and flashy cars. “Not my place to forgive you for it.”

Viktor Nikiforov nodded. At least they agreed on that much.

The kid looked rough. Yuko waited until they had boarded the Gulfstream to say so.

“Who shot him?” She looked at each of them, even as she snapped on gloves and Yuuri peeled his bloody jacket away from the wound; Viktor Nikiforov raised a mocking eyebrow, and Phichit Chulanont colored and looked to the floor.

“He’s gonna--” _Live_ , was the word he’d meant to say, Yuko figured. He bit his tongue before he managed to trespass on such unfortunate possibilities as not living. “I mean--I just--”

“Don't want to be responsible for assassinating the child prince of a prominent Russian mob family?” Yuko offered for him in curt Japanese. Chulanont’s eyes widened, and Yuko took pity. “He’ll be fine.”

To Yuuri, she said, “The most I can do right now is stop him from losing any more blood,” and Yuuri nodded.

“Do that.”

“Takeshi can do more, at home,” Yuko continued quietly, and Yuuri blinked at her. Perhaps the word _home_ had thrown him. “But he’ll be fine. It didn’t hit bone, or the brachial.”

“I know.” He blinked again, and Yuko remembered the supposedly self-inflicted gash in his bicep. She made a stern face.

“Go. Sit. I’ll be over in a bit to fix your arm.”

“Put Chulanont back together again first,” Yuuri said softly, nodding at the man who had wandered to a distant window to blink out at the dark airstrip. “I can wait.”

Yuko smiled. Set about checking the wound for any surprise arterial rupture, and paid calm, careful mind to the new blood spotting her gloved hands. “Making friends, Yuuri?”

“Languishing in jealousy, Yuko?” he snapped, equally low as her taunt had been.

Nishigori Yuko shook her head. She said quietly, “I’m glad.”

Yuuri looked at her for a few uncomfortable moments too long. Yuko was accustomed to this by now--Yuuri didn't care for curbing those of his mannerisms which made people uncomfortable, after all--and she held his gaze.

“The plane is Minako’s,” Yuuri said. It was not a question.

Now, Yuko looked down. She threaded a surgical needle deftly. “Family’s back together again,” she murmured. “Just like old times.”

She knew, from the way he paused and swayed--just a bit--that Yuuri had closed his eyes. “For me?”

Yuko thought of the red koi tattooed up both of their forearms, of the way she had pressed the bare flesh together ten years ago and twined their fingers and kissed Yuuri’s cheeks. He had cried more, back then. Had felt more too, perhaps.

“Always for you,” Yuko said softly. Then she smiled. “Get some rest, Yuuri. It’s a long flight to Kyoto.”

“Twelve hours,” Yuuri murmured. Yuko busied herself with temporarily sewing up the unconscious sixteen-year-old. “I know.”

Preoccupied as she was, Yuko did not watch him slip away. But she knew, simply because she knew Yuuri, to whom he went.

* * *

 

“I want an explanation.” Demanding it was the only thing that could keep him sane. Viktor Nikiforov was losing his mind.

Katsuki Yuuri looked at him, gaze heavy-lidded, mouth soft with exhaustion. He said, “I suppose we owe you that.”

“We,” Viktor repeated. Yuuri’s hands fluttered briefly, nervously, in his lap.

He said, “Fuchū enlisted me to arrest you. I didn't have a choice in the matter.” A pause. “Clearly, or I would have killed you on sight months ago, Vitenka.”

“Don't,” Viktor said softly, and he did not know if it was the name or Yuuri’s continued bravado which made him say it. Regardless, Yuuri paid the order no mind.

“They had my family,” he went on. “They still do. I had to follow orders.”

Despite himself, Viktor Nikiforov found himself saying, “I understand.” Katsuki Yuuri looked at him sharply.

“Don’t say that,” he snapped, and there was a furious light behind his eyes. “You don't get to mock me.”

Viktor did not know how to explain that he wasn’t, that the idea of mocking Katsuki Yuuri had never crossed his mind. He closed his eyes and said nothing.

“I really wanted to kill you,” Yuuri said, and there seemed to be no apology behind it. “And then I didn't.”

_I’m sorry._ Viktor Nikiforov was good at making people fall in love with him. It was one of the few things that had kept him alive for so long--as undeserving as he was, people liked him. Forgave him. Katsuki Yuuri was constantly, endlessly, falling under that sway.

“Chulanont worked for Fuchū, and now he works for me. He’s not an Okukawa. But he’s mine.”

Finally, Viktor could not help himself. Softly, he said, “So is this an arrest, Katsuki Yuuri?”

“No.” Simply stated, for a reply with connotations so heavy. “This is a rescue.”

* * *

 

It had been a long time since Katsuki Yuuri had stood on these shores. He wasn’t there now, but it was easy to imagine he was.

Hasetsu had not changed. It was not the kind of place that was capable of change, after all. Yuuri expected it would look the same as it did when he was a child until long after he had died. Little ocean towns were immortal in that way.

The water lapped at his shoes. The tide was coming in. Yuuri got the sense that it had been coming in for longer than it should, and that it would continue to come in for several more hours. It would wash them all away. Yuuri found he didn't mind.

Behind him, his hometown was sleeping. Perhaps it was empty. There was no drowsy light to any of the windows. The water continued to come in.

On the shore, Katsuki Yuuri spread wide his arms and closed his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no notes this time around (except to keep in mind that it's not over yet!)
> 
> as always, thanks for reading, comments, and kudos!
> 
> xx


	19. Hasetsu

By the time she reached him, Katsuki Yuuri was asleep. Yuko was glad to see so, because it meant that he had at least heeded a fraction of her advice, but Yuuri was a light sleeper. She touched his cheek, and he woke.

Across from him was Viktor Nikiforov. He sat with an elbow propped on the shallow windowsill, his fingers contemplatively at his mouth. He looked like a greytone photograph of some gangster a century earlier, back when being pretty and in love with oneself would have been an even greater vice. He watched Nishigori Yuko in silence.

“Yes,” Katsuki Yuuri said softly, as if he was answering a question Yuko had not asked. He spoke Japanese, still blinked away sleep. “Yuko.”

“Let me fix your arm,” Yuko said, and she carefully looked no longer at Viktor Nikiforov.

For a moment, Yuuri looked too low, where an older wound had once laid open. He shook his head. “No, sorry.” Then he turned, offered her his right upper arm. Red had stiffened the fabric already, and Yuko’s gloved fingers came away rusty with the powder of dried blood.

“Darling,” she said, like she used to, and she thought that briefly Yuuri smiled. “You’re a terrible mess.”

“Yes.” Cords in his neck tightened; Yuko was disinfecting the wound, and it burned. “Oh.”

“Apologies,” Yuko hummed, threading the needle again. “I stitched your Thai friend back together and put him to sleep. He should be out until we land in Japan.”

Quietly, Yuuri said, “Thank you.”

“Mhm. He seems sweet.”

A soft laugh escaped him. “Too sweet,” Yuuri agreed.

“I think he worships you, a little bit.” He did not react when Yuko first slipped the threaded needle beneath his skin; instead his head dropped forward and Yuko caught his jaw carefully. “Stay awake for a few more minutes, love.”

Yuuri hummed a noncommittal response. Viktor Nikiforov continued to watch them in silence.

“I would prefer he didn’t,” Yuuri murmured, and it took Yuko a precious moment to recall he was speaking of Phichit Chulanont, on the subject of worship. “Dangerous pastime.”

“Not to mention that you don't deserve it,” Yuko said, in jest, and Yuuri smiled.

“No,” he murmured. “I don’t.”

“The curse of being pretty.” Yuko finished her stitches and broke off the surgical thread. “Men just fall all over you.”

The sound Yuuri made was good-naturedly annoyed. Yuko knew, because she knew Yuuri, that he was blushing. “If only they could see me at sixteen, and maybe they’d reconsider.”

“Oh, I doubt it.” Yuko kissed his temples, then the highest points of his cheekbones. “You were always lovely, babe. I used to get incredibly jealous.”

Even if he didn’t believe her, judging by the pleased way he hummed, he still took the flattery to heart. Nishigori Yuko smiled, then removed her gloves.

“Go to sleep, Yuuri. I’ll stay up.”

“Oh,” he protested quietly. “I don't mean to--”

“I don't mind.” She didn't. “And I couldn't sleep with him here anyway.”

A pause. Yuko wondered if pointing that out was pushing the bounds of Yuuri’s current drowsy good nature. But he merely mumbled, “M’sorry,” and Yuko shrugged.

“Can’t be helped,” she said, and as she did so she straightened and looked Viktor Nikiforov in the face. He blinked, and she wondered if he had grasped any of their conversation.

It seemed tragic to her, that he had spent three long years in love with Katsuki Yuuri and still could not speak Japanese. But perhaps such were romantic notions. Perhaps Yuko had no right to apply them to the mess that was the relationship between Viktor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri.

Either way, when he looked at her, Yuko put her teeth together fiercely, and she knew the tightening of her jaw was easily translatable.

To Katsuki Yuuri, she repeated, “Go to sleep,” even as she knew by the gentle dip of his head and the quiet that fell over them both that he already had.

* * *

Viktor Nikiforov watched him for several minutes after Nishigori Yuko left. He wondered what it was about Nishigori that made Yuuri so different in her presence, and could not decide if such a visible effect on the latter made him jealous.

He wondered, too, if there had ever been a time when his proximity to Katsuki Yuuri had done the same: softened Yuuri’s voice, relaxed his smile, made falling asleep easy and safe. Viktor decided if there had ever been such a time, he had forgotten it. The thought made him frown.

He still didn't quite understand. Yuuri had designed to ruin him, seduce him and turn him over to the FSB, as revenge? Closure? Because he had no other choice? Had he thought the matter of Yuuri also being an internationally wanted criminal would simply sort itself out, after he finished whoring himself to Tokyo and Moscow? Pride did not keep Viktor from acknowledging that between the two of them, Yuuri was the more dangerous now. Surely, if international forces had determined that Viktor needed to be put down, Yuuri would not escape cooperation with them with his head.

But of course not. Yuuri was not stupid. Yuuri knew this. Yuuri had said, _They had my family._ Yuuri had said, _This is a rescue._

So he had meant, at least in the end, to save him. Why couldn't he have just _said_ so? Viktor had nearly killed him--had sought pleasure in finally killing him, tasted vindication in having been humiliated and compromised for so long and finally _ending_ it--because he had thought Yuuri had meant to betray him.

But he had, originally. Did that still count as betrayal? Did that absolve Viktor Nikiforov of the way he had smiled when he closed his hand around Katsuki Yuuri’s throat?

But if he had _known--_

“I wouldn't have believed you.”

It was only a whisper, and yet it surprised him, but it was true. Even Viktor could not flatter himself with false assumptions of kindliness; he was not a good person, and he had never been. Had Yuuri told him that he had previously conspired with the likes of Grigori Beskudnikov to put Viktor Nikiforov in a cell in frigid Krasnoyarsk--or more likely to have him privately executed after an extended period of interrogation and torture--but had undergone a change of heart, Viktor would have laughed. And then probably also tried to kill him, as he had tonight.

Yuuri knew him better than Viktor knew himself--truthfully, it had always been so--and Yuuri knew they were most alike in one respect. Forgiveness, of one another and of oneself, was a strange, unwelcome concept to Viktor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri. Really, this was the only way the situation could have come to pass, especially since the term _bloodless_ was also foreign to them.

And suddenly, Viktor Nikiforov found this accurate knowledge of his heart and mind uncomfortable. He preferred not to think of himself in honest terms most of the time, and for another to know him intimately enough to do so was unbearable.

_I’m sorry._ He was too humiliated to say it. But he would have to, eventually. He had already waited much too long.

* * *

Kyoto was sleepier than Tokyo, and though that didn't mean much at all by definition, Yuuri was grateful for the reprieve it offered. Tokyo would have been too much, all at once. It was not a city he imagined he could come back to on such sudden terms.

Takeshi met them at the strip. Yuko wrapped her arms around him briefly, went to the tips of her toes to whisper something in his ear, and then turned to Yuuri. He was carrying the unconscious Plisetsky heir in his arms, but as he stepped off the final stair, Viktor Nikiforov’s phone began to buzz in his pocket. Yuuri ignored it.

Nishigori Takeshi frowned, and before he greeted Yuuri he said, “That’s one more than expected.”

Katsuki Yuuri shrugged. “Believe me, I would rather we left him in Russia too,” and at this, Takeshi smiled.

“Katsuki,” he greeted amicably, and though Yuuri had not known Nishigori Takeshi to any extent near that which he had known Yuko, they had been fair friends in Yuuri’s early twenties. He smiled too, and dipped his head.

“I had hoped you still had plans to assassinate him,” Takeshi remarked, and Yuuri presumed that meant Nikiforov had stepped off the jet with Chulanont, looking the least battered out of the Petersburg four. Beside her husband, Yuko’s mouth twisted, as if she agreed with the sentiment.

“Well,” Yuuri said, more softly now. He left it at that.

Viktor Nikiforov’s phone buzzed against his chest with more persistence now. Yuuri grimaced. “Can someone--” Plisetsky’s weight was suddenly absent from his arms, as Takeshi relieved him of the unconscious kid, and Yuuri murmured a quiet surprised thanks.

Then he answered Viktor Nikiforov’s phone.

“Yes,” he greeted flatly, in Russian, as he slid into the massive black vehicle Takeshi had brought. The response was a barrage of loud, enraged Russian, and instinctively Yuuri pulled the phone away from his ear. “Christophe. Good afternoon.”

“Is this a hostage situation?” Giacometti snapped on the other end, still too loud. Yuuri pressed his lips together.

“No, it’s not a hostage situation.”

“Don't play _games_ with me, Katsuki--”

“I’m not playing games,” Yuuri said calmly. Someone slid into the seat beside him--Viktor Nikiforov. He looked at Yuuri with narrowed eyes. “Would you like to speak to him?”

“Put him on,” Giacometti snapped, and here Yuuri tipped his chin. Played a game--just one. For his own sanity’s sake.

“Say please.”

“Oh, _fuck_ you--” Yuuri turned him on speaker so the majority of the venomous phrase projected itself to the automobile’s ceiling. He thought Phichit Chulanont might have flinched.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Chris.”

There was a pause. Christophe Giacometti replied quietly, “Vik.”

Yuuri couldn't help himself. “Watch what you say, Christophe,” he chimed. “You’re on speaker. And you’ll speak English from now on.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor Nikiforov murmured, as if saying his name in a gentle voice would endear him to their cause. Yuuri looked at him icily.

“You have five minutes,” he announced to the phone. “In English.”

From the driver’s side, Yuko turned and briefly met Yuuri’s eyes. Yuuri’s expression did not change.

In English--voice clipped as if it was causing him pain to yield to Yuuri’s orders--Christophe Giacometti said, “Where are you?”

Viktor Nikiforov, to his credit, hesitated. Looked to Yuuri, who replied airily, “Nowhere.”

“Japan, then,” Giacometti said, as if it was a newly confirmed certainty. “That’s the only place you’d go.”

Again, Yuko cast an anxious glance back to Yuuri. He shook his head, and she returned her eyes to the road.

Viktor Nikiforov asked quietly, “How is Mila?”

“Alive.” A breath, and then a laugh. “Angry.”

“The aim was no casualties,” Yuuri said. “This isn't another coup, Christophe.”

“And yet you took Plisetsky.” Admirably, he was still using English. Yuuri didn't know if he would have possessed enough self control, in the heat of that rage, to do so in Giacometti’s situation. “You know better than us all what that means, Katsuki Yuuri.”

“Chris--” Viktor began, and Yuuri spoke over him.

“I’m not asking for a war. Do not assume that’s anything close to what I want.”

“You started this, Katsuki Yuuri,” Giacometti snapped. “I will _assume_ what I see fit.”

“Chris,” Viktor said quietly. “Don't be rash.”

Yuuri said, “Let me speak to Yakov.”

“He’s not here.”

A lie, surely. Yuuri let him get away with it. “Then tell him I will speak to him in two hours,” he said sharply. “If he doesn't call me, I’ll call him. Is that understood?”

“Don’t give me orders--”

“Is that _understood?”_ Yuuri snarled, and again Phichit Chulanont flinched. Viktor Nikiforov looked at him sharply.

“It’s understood.” Christophe Giacometti’s voice was drenched with loathing. “I’ll pass the word along.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri said.

“Don’t start this war, Chris,” Viktor Nikiforov said in parting. Perhaps it would have held more weight as an order had there been any authority at all to his tone. But he sounded much more exhausted than princely.

“I’ll do what I have to, Vik,” Christophe Giacometti said in Russian, and then he hung up before Yuuri could.

“I do hope you aren't bringing the end of the world to my doorstep,” Nishigori Takeshi said calmly, in Japanese, and Yuuri laid his forehead against the cool, tinted window.

* * *

 

The Nishigori home was more modest than Nevsky Prospekt. Much more modest, if one was the tell the truth, but Viktor Nikiforov did not find this fact lessening of its value. It was quiet, and careful, and yet lived-in, like the city just outside of which it resided. A wide, undisturbed pool stretched behind the gate. The exterior of the first level was concealed by a wild tangle of greenery. There were no lights visible in any of the windows.

It reminded Viktor somehow of Yuuri, though he couldn't place exactly why. Perhaps how _Japanese_ it was. Perhaps how silently, unyieldingly proud.

When they left the vehicle, Yuuri relieved Yuko’s husband of Yuri Plisetsky, and he murmured something quiet which Viktor assumed was an expression of gratitude. Nishigori nodded, and then he turned to Viktor.

“I have three daughters,” he said brusquely.

Despite his better judgement, Viktor Nikiforov said, “I know.”

“Don’t.” Katsuki Yuuri did not turn to look at him, but he spoke Russian. It was the first time he had done so in hours. In the car, the terse words in his mouth had been mostly Japanese. When he had spoken to Viktor, he had used English. “They aren't for games.”

Silently, Viktor nodded. Nishigori Takeshi’s expression was unreadable. His wife leaned against the driver’s door of the automobile with a slinky grace reminiscent of Yuuri’s own and said with an air of amusement, “Don’t touch anything that looks breakable, Nikiforov, because I can guarantee it’ll be older than your entire family line.”

Takeshi led the way. When he opened the gate, stepped up the winding path, the sound of a door sliding open made him look up. Viktor Nikiforov watched him crouch low, catch the child that came tottering barefoot down the path around her waist, and swing her upward against his shoulder with a heavy weight in his mouth.

“Kids,” said Phichit Chulanont, as though it was still a surprise to him that a family with ties to Yuuri--and thus, ties to Viktor--could have kids. _Normal_ kids. It came as a surprise to Viktor Nikiforov too.

“Her name is Axel,” Nishigori Yuko replied. Viktor Nikiforov had paused, had closed his eyes, and she prodded him in the back. “Walk.”

Inside the house, Takeshi placed the child firmly on the floor and imparted stern orders of some sort that made her giggle and turn on her heel, then stomp cheerfully away. When Viktor Nikiforov looked to Katsuki Yuuri, there was a small, unassuming curve to the latter’s lips. He said something in Japanese that made Nishigori Takeshi laugh lowly, and both their gazes flickered to Viktor Nikiforov.

Viktor Nikiforov did not very much like being the subject of a private joke, nor the ignorant party not let in on the secret. The twist to his mouth, he knew, was a shade too petulant for his age.

“Bring him here,” Takeshi said, finally in a tongue Viktor could understand, and Yuuri followed him into a modest empty bedroom. Katsuki lay Yuri Plisetsky on the bed, and Nishigori’s husband looked at Viktor narrowly. “Not you. You stay with Yuko.”

“Somehow I can't bring myself to be honored,” Nishigori Yuko drawled from where she leaned casually against the doorway. “Nor less than a little hurt I’m not invited to the boys’ party, darling.” She pushed out her lower lip slightly, a bit mockingly, and when Takeshi said something in low Japanese she rolled her eyes.

“Come,” she said to Viktor Nikiforov, and he followed. “There are too many men in my house today, Viktor Nikiforov. I blame you for that.”

“My apologies.”

“Hm. Do you smoke?” When he shook his head, Nishigori Yuko scowled. “Must be the one vice you don't indulge, then.”

A flicker of offense, before Viktor decided he couldn't exactly argue defamation for such a statement. It was true.

“Never picked up the habit,” he replied instead, and Yuuri’s old best friend looked bemused.

“I keep trying to quit. It’s going as you might expect.” She stopped abruptly, and Viktor rocked on his heels to keep from colliding with her. “In here.”

The room in particular was a bit small. A painting which looked old and perhaps incredibly expensive was hung over the desk. There was a bed.

Yuko sat on the surface of the desk, and Viktor Nikiforov was left standing alone in the center of the room. He tipped up his chin quietly. Her teasing smile was gone now.

Nishigori Yuko said softly, “Were it up to me, Nikiforov, you would be dead. I’m sure this comes as no surprise to you. But I don’t want you to forget it.”

“I promise you I won’t.”

Brief, terrible silence. Yuko did not look like she placed much weight on his promises.

“It’s no small thing for me to bring you to Kyoto. The fact that you are currently in my home makes me incredibly angry. I didn't trust you when you were halfway across the world and now--”

She paused. Tilted her head to the side, and smiled.

“What is it about you?” she inquired suddenly. “Six years, and I still haven't managed to figure it out.”

Quietly: “I don’t know what you mean.”

“When we were kids, I used to be so jealous of Yuuri. I loved him with my whole heart--and I still do, understand--but I was so _envious_ of him too. He was always everybody’s favorite.” Yuko tipped back her gaze to the ceiling and shrugged. “There was something about Katsuki Yuuri that just made you love him. Even when you were afraid of him.”

“Were you ever afraid of him?”

Yuko leveled her gaze with him again.

“Only once.”

Viktor Nikiforov nodded, without quite knowing why.

“He was seventeen. I was eighteen. We were in Osaka for what Minako called debt collection, which usually meant assassination back then. It was the first person Yuuri had ever killed, and he was a mess. Emotionally, physically--” Yuko turned out her palms. “I had to take him home, to Tokyo, and listen to Minako tell him what a wonderful job he had done. I worried he was going to break into a thousand pieces, and at the same time I was afraid he wouldn't.”

“He didn't. I made him let me clean all the blood off of him, and the entire time he didn't speak. It was obviously shock, because he had been such a shambles in Osaka, but when I put him to bed, he asked me if he had done a good job.” She smiled, and briefly it looked tragic. “He asked if Minako was really, truthfully pleased. There was still a bit of blood on his jaw, because I hadn’t seen it while scrubbing him clean of it.”

“That was the only time I was afraid of him, Viktor Nikiforov. And that was only because I knew Minako would _use_ that--how much he wanted to please, to do well by the people who said they loved him--and it would ruin him. I expected she would be the one to finally use it to kill him, though.” Sharp twist to her smile, now a terrible weapon. “Not some pretty boy Russian that he had bought a wedding ring for.”

“Oh.” What a stupid thing for him to say. He had no other words.

“But then again, the way he worships you isn't like Minako,” Yuko continued quietly. “He hated Minako, even if Yuuri himself didn't realize it, and he bowed and scraped out of necessity. Respect for her had been beaten into him, and it was what he knew because he had been _taught_ so. With you--” She paused. Met Viktor Nikiforov’s gaze searchingly, calculatingly. “I don't know what it was with you. You didn't hurt him, in those first years, did you?”

_“God,_ no.” Perhaps the response was too vehement to be impartial. Still, Viktor Nikiforov shook his head firmly. “Never.”

“Hm.” Quiet. Yuko raised an eyebrow. “When I met Takeshi, I thought maybe I could finally understand. I have three daughters with the man now, and I love him completely and totally, and yet--I don't know. I don't know if he could do to me what you did to Yuuri, and yet somehow convince me to still love him.”

And now, it was like all the wind had left his lungs. Viktor’s eyes went wide, his throat closed briefly, and he only managed a quiet, “Excuse me?” before he began to feel as if he might be too sick to chance speaking again. He shook his head as if to dispel a thought, or a dream.

Nishigori Yuko looked at him then, and Viktor wondered if he imagined the softening to her face. The shift into something akin to pity. She stood from the desk.

“You will stay here, in this room. You will not speak to my daughters, and you will not leave unless Takeshi, Yuuri, or I give you permission to do so. Is that understood?”

Viktor Nikiforov nodded. When Yuko left, sweeping the door closed in a manner than somehow projected further disdain for the single occupant of the room, he tipped back his head and wondered if it would have been easier if he had died at Nevsky.

* * *

Yuuri was watching the garden below the window when Plisetsky woke.

He knew this as he knew that when Yuri Plisetsky opened his eyes, Takeshi was there, and he placed a hand on his chest and said in English, “Easy.” Yuuri turned from the window right as Plisetsky began to say in Russian, “What the _fuck--”_

“Don’t,” Yuuri said, also in Russian because he doubted Plisetsky was coherent enough to understand English. Back in the Spanish hospital, the nurses told him Yuuri hadn’t spoken anything but Japanese for a full day after waking. “You’ve lost enough blood as it is.”

“What?”

To Takeshi, Yuuri said, “What did you give him?”

Nishigori Takeshi still had his hand on Plisetsky’s chest. He said, “Fentanyl. It’s what I had.”

Yuuri nodded. “It’ll start to hurt soon enough,” he said. Russian again. Yuri Plisetsky looked at him in hazy suspicion.

“Where’s Viktor?”

“Alive.” Yuuri looked to Takeshi. “Thank you. Can you send Yuko in, when you go?”

It was a clear dismissal, and even in his own home Takeshi accepted it graciously. He nodded, pausing only briefly to clasp Katsuki Yuuri on the shoulder, and left in silence.

There was a chair beside the bed. Yuuri sat in it.

“No broken bones, Yura. No major artery damage. Would you like me to help you sit up?”

“I want…” He frowned. “I want you to tell me where we are.”

“Kyoto,” Yuuri replied. “Japan.”

_“Japan?”_

“Yes.”

“Oh. He’s awake.”

A struggle for recognition bloomed on Yuri Plisetsky’s face as Nishigori Yuko stepped into the room. She asked, “How are you feeling, kid?”

Yuuri helpfully translated this much into Russian, omitting the word kid. Yuri Plisetsky did not take kindly to being reminded he was a child.

“Like _hell,”_ Plisetsky snapped, more viciously now that he was beginning to grasp his surroundings and his situation. “You kidnapped me?”

“Nothing you’re not used to,” Yuuri muttered, and then sat up. “No,” he amended professionally. “We saved your life.”

_“After_ you had your man shoot me, yeah,” Plisetsky retorted, and Yuuri would have corrected that he hadn't ordered Phichit Chulanont to do any such thing, had Yuri Plisetsky not given a small, surprised gasp and sank against the sheets. “Hurts again,” he informed quietly. Katsuki Yuuri nodded.

“It will hurt for a long while. But you'll be fine. If it was going to kill you, it would have twelve hours ago.”

“Comforting.”

Viktor Nikiforov’s phone began to buzz again in his breast pocket. Yuuri said, “I need to take this. Yuko, will you--”

“Of course.” She went to the bed and placed the back of her hand flat against Plisetsky’s forehead. He flinched, and Katsuki Yuuri answered the call.

“Feltsman,” he said, and returned to the windowsill so he could gaze contemplatively into the green garden.

* * *

 

The knocking outside the door came again. It had visited him intermittently over the course of the last hour, accompanied by light giggling. At one point, the door crept fractionally open, and a pair of slim woman’s hands had caught by the collar the child that had aimed to sneak inside. Viktor had been quietly amused.

Now the knocking came louder, from a higher place on the door. Assuming this visitor, at least, was not a toddler, Viktor inquired softly, “Who is it?”

The door opened, and the next child attempting to seize this new opportunity to get inside was foiled neatly by Katsuki Yuuri. He snatched her gently from around the waist, and when she shrieked with laughter he held her up to his face and intoned some good-natured admonishment. Then he tucked her against his shoulder like it was second-nature for him to do so, and she reached up and entertained herself with grabbing harmlessly at his jaw.

Viktor said, “Yuuri.” Katsuki Yuuri looked tired.

“I spoke to Feltsman,” Yuuri said. “We struck a deal.”

“I thought this wasn’t a hostage situation,” Viktor murmured.

“It’s not. But you all appear to have adverse reactions to being told the truth, don't you?” Carefully, he disentangled Yuko’s daughter’s hand from his hair, and winced as he did so. “He wants Plisetsky back within the week, and in return I get to keep you for a bit longer.”

“Keep me,” Viktor echoed.

“I told him I had unfinished business which required you in Japan, and he conceded as long as you remain alive.” Yuuri met his eyes, and his gaze was arresting. “They’ve promoted Giacometti to your place already, Viktor. I assume it’s temporary.”

Knowing Yakov, Viktor could not optimistically assume the same. He nodded.

“Chris,” he said, but could not finish. He tried again. “Chris is a good man.”

Wryly, Yuuri smiled. “Aren’t we all.”

The flat mistruth of the statement was unbearable. Viktor directed his attention to the toddler attempting to climb about Yuuri’s shoulders. “Which one is that?”

“Hm. Couldn't say.” When Viktor raised an eyebrow, Yuuri protested lightly, “In my defense, they are identical triplets, and we were just acquainted an hour ago.” He pried the girl’s grip from his shoulder and raised her again level with his face. _“Namae wa?”_

She replied in bubbling Japanese, then reached suddenly for his mouth and cuffed him clumsily across the face. Yuuri blinked, and then set her firmly on the desk. Held onto her wrists so she could not throw herself off the edge and said with an air of near-comical professionalism, “Her name is Lutz.”

Despite himself, Viktor Nikiforov smiled. “And is she anything like her mother?”

“Oh, very much so,” Yuuri replied calmly. When the toddler stamped her foot and demanded something unknown of Katsuki Yuuri, his reply was a delicately arched eyebrow and a sudden sweep off her feet and into his lap. She shrieked in delight, and then yanked, likely insisting _again again_ , at his sleeves. “And a bit too much like her father.”

Viktor Nikiforov realized suddenly, belatedly, that his gaze had lingered on him for too long. Yuuri cleared his throat, and Viktor looked away. “Forgive me,” Yuuri murmured, and he stood with the girl in his arms and carried her from the room. Viktor half-expected him not to return.

But he did return--without the toddler this time--and when he did he sighed. He said, “I’m sorry.”

Viktor nearly laughed. “What do you have to apologize for?”

“Less than you.” He said it without vitriol. It was merely the truth. “And still. There’s quite a lot.”

“Yuko said--”

Gentle smile. “Which of my secrets did she spill this time?”

Viktor didn't know how one could say _you’re still in love with me_ without sounding like an arrogant bastard. He felt sick even when he thought it. He settled on an embarrassed castaway glance to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can't--there's no way I can regret this enough.”

“Which part?” Yuuri’s voice had gone soft. Quiet. Viktor Nikiforov blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“Which part do you regret?” He swayed imperceptibly, and Viktor worried suddenly that he might collapse. He had left the bruises on Yuuri’s throat, across his face, and he wanted to touch them.

“I--” He was reaching, barely, for him. He hadn't even realized.

Viktor withdrew his hand. “The bruises. Do they--” He couldn't finish the question.

Yuuri looked perplexed, and then his fingers went belatedly to his neck. “I forgot they were there,” he murmured thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry.” Was he going to _cry?_ Was he seventeen again, cradling a puppy with broken legs in a slummy alleyway, begging _please? Let me fix this? I just want to be_ good _?_

“Yuuri.” He tried again. He couldn't get a single word to fall from his mouth the way he wanted. They were all grief-heavy, and Viktor just wanted something he said to be rational. Nothing was making sense anymore. “Can I please--”

Katsuki Yuuri closed his eyes, and it was as good an invitation as he was wont to give. Viktor reached out and touched him.

His shoulder, first, because Viktor was not brave but even more so he did not want to push his boundaries, and his shoulder would give Yuuri ample opportunity to shrug him off. He did not.

From his shoulder, the tense muscles in his neck, and when Viktor Nikiforov ventured to cup his jaw Katsuki Yuuri said, Please don't.”

His eyes were still closed. Viktor removed his hands.

“My apologies,” he whispered. “I don't want to push.”

How different now, from the weeks before. Yuuri had visited him nearly every night in Russia, driven by his apparent need to make Viktor the one to say please. Now, here in Japan, he could hardly allow touch between them.

Perhaps this suggested something about the real Katsuki Yuuri, and the creature he had instead been for Viktor Nikiforov’s benefit. Why did the thought of such minor duplicity, in the face of so many greater lies, make Viktor’s chest ache?

A knock on the door. Not a child’s imitation, this time. Katsuki Yuuri said, “We leave tomorrow for Hasetsu,” and then he pulled away.

When the door opened, Nishigori Yuko behind it, Yuuri was already at the window. Viktor Nikiforov stood alone in the center of the room, his hands not quite at his sides and his expression just one shade too honest for neutral.

* * *

Yuuri knocked, and then opened Phichit’s door without waiting for a reply. The latter was sitting on the bed, staring blankly at his hands, and he looked up belatedly when Yuuri leaned against the doorway.

“Oh,” Phichit Chulanont said, as Yuuri’s own silence stretched on. “Hello.”

Katsuki Yuuri said, “Do you have a family, Phichit?”

Phichit blinked at him. Then: “Yes,” he said. “In Bangkok.”

“Do they know how you have spent the last few months of your life?”

“No.”

“Did you keep in touch with them before Russia?” Katsuki followed up, mercilessly. Phichit looked perplexed, and a bit upset. Yuuri reminded himself that he did not care.

Phichit whispered, “Yes.”

Still leaning in the doorway, Yuuri produced Viktor Nikiforov’s phone and flashed its screen to catch Phichit’s attention. “I suggest you call them now. Use this, since yours is currently shattered on a Russian highway.” Then he tossed the phone, and Phichit caught it.

“Thank you.”

“Of course.” Yuuri rubbed tiredly at his eyes. He had lied when he told Viktor he did not feel the bruises. Everything was twice as laborious now that even breathing required conscious focus. “Phichit?”

The man looked up again. “Yeah?”

“Did you happen to still have those...photos? Of my family?”

Regret and something else--pity, abhorrently--flooded his features. “No,” Phichit said quietly. “No, I left them in the flat with the rest of my things.”

Yuuri nodded. He had thought so, but it couldn’t have hurt to ask. “Alright,” he murmured. He turned to go. “Bring me the phone when you’re finished. You know where I’ll be.”

“I’m sorry, Yuuri,” Phichit said, and Yuuri waved a dismissive hand at him as he left.

* * *

 

Viktor spread his fingers against bone, pressed his mouth to skin. Katsuki Yuuri tipped back his head and made a mild sound of protest.

“I’m sorry.” Already, he was drawing away. “If it hurts, I won’t.”

“No,” Katsuki Yuuri murmured, and he sank back into the sheets. “No, no.” He had taken his painkillers with alcohol, and the mix had made him woozy. “S’fine.”

This was Viktor’s second time to Tokyo. Yuuri had called him here on business matters, and when Viktor had arrived he had found him like this. Battered, bruised, and unwilling to implicate any of his own family in the matter.

Though Viktor knew, of course. The offender was not difficult to guess.

“Hm.” His mouth back against his ribs, but softer this time. Yuuri placed a sleep-heavy hand on his head and wound his fingers in his hair. “Are you going to show me the city tomorrow, love?”

“I could...show you now,” Yuuri offered, his words sliding drowsily into one another. Privately, Viktor smiled.

“No, I think we’ll wait. Your body wants to fix itself, and so you need to rest.”

“I...want it to fix itself too,” he murmured. He had begun to go incoherent, just a bit. “Hurts.”

“I know, love.” Viktor had been on the receiving end of a set of bruised ribs before too. Nikolai’s work, when he was sixteen. Lilia had easily put him back together again, but that didn't mean it hadn't hurt like hell. The problem was that the damage lay beneath, in the bone, and even when the skin looked pretty and healed, the ribs and what existed beneath them--the important parts--could still be at risk of further injury. “Does this make it better, or worse?”

The sharp intake of breath above him as Viktor placed a gentle kiss against his rib cage probably meant _worse_. But Katsuki Yuuri laughed.

“Missed you,” he said, voice low and lovely, lovely, lovely. “Kiss me again.”

And Viktor did, trailing a careful line of mouth-to-skin contact along his ribs, up his sternum, to the perfect slope of his throat. Yuuri laughed quietly again when Viktor brushed his lips against Yuuri’s but did not allow further transgression, and then Yuuri’s mouth fell open and became softly entreating and Viktor gave in. Kissed him fully, slowly, until Yuuri moaned and fisted a hand in Viktor’s hair, until he wrapped around his fingers Viktor’s collar and yanked him down over him and all his breath left him in a pained gasp and Viktor was saying, _“Fuck,”_ because he had forgotten they had both forgotten he was so _stupid--_

“S’fine,” Yuuri panted, except that it wasn't, except that his eyes were shut tight and he was trying to gasp again but he couldn't because his _ribs._

Viktor said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” scrambling indelicately off his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s _fine,”_ Yuuri snapped, but Viktor was beside himself promising _I didn't mean it I didn’t_ and the longer he said it the more the pain in Yuuri’s ribs appeared to fade in the light of his irritation with Viktor’s panic, and he said, “Please. You’re making my head hurt.”

“That’s the substance abuse,” Viktor said quietly, and Yuuri continued to look at him in hazy annoyance until long after Viktor began to thread his fingers through his dark hair, when he finally let his brow smooth and his jaw soften and Yuuri murmured, “Sorry. Bad mood.”

“It’s understandable. Long day.”

“Mm. Wish I was less sober to make up for it,” Yuuri muttered, and Viktor smiled.

“There are better times for such things.”

The fingers of Viktor’s other hand tapped lightly on Yuuri’s bottom lip. Yuuri smiled against them. “No better time than the present.”

Firmly, Viktor said, “Get some rest, Yura.” Yuuri closed his eyes obediently, and Viktor Nikiforov kissed him into sleep.

Afterwards, he sat cross-legged in Yuuri’s bed and watched orange red blue lights flicker and buzz in the Kabukicho street from outside the far window.

When Viktor Nikiforov woke in Kyoto, the sky was dark. Standing at the window of his little temporary bedroom, it was possible for one to make out the shadow of someone in the Nishigori gardens.

Viktor knew who it was, because he knew the way he walked. Even now.

“Restless?” he asked. He had been silent, carefully noting what was underfoot so he would not make any noise, but Yuuri had known he was there anyway. Yuuri had good instincts. “Time zones, I suppose.”

“You’re not supposed to leave your room,” Yuuri murmured, turning to look. “Not without permission.”

“Do I have your permission then?” He didn't know where the casual courage came from. It made him blink, and Yuuri dipped his head.

“I suppose.”

“Thank you.” Yuuri stood at the base of a tall tree. Viktor kept his distance. “How are you feeling? About being back?”

“I’ve never been to this place,” Yuuri said.

“You know what I mean.”

A ghost of a troubled expression. Yuuri’s tone was controlled. “I was just home a few months ago. But as a free man...”

“It’s different,” Viktor supplied, when it became evident Yuuri would not.

The latter nodded. Said, “Different.”

“And Hasetsu?”

Yuuri lifted his chin. He had left Russia without his glasses, and it showed in the focus of his gaze. The consequential uncertainty showed on his face too, and softened it. “I don't know.”

Viktor thought he did. He didn't push the subject. It was difficult for men like Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov to say things like _I am afraid._

Quietly, Yuuri said, “Ten years.”

“It’s a long time.”

A terrible silence asphyxiated between them. Eventually Yuuri whispered, “I understand why you did it.”

“No.” And then there was panic bubbling in him, and fury too, and this was not right, not after so long. He didn't deserve understanding. “No. Don’t say--please don’t--”

“Please let me speak, Vitya.” Yuuri was looking out past the little grove of trees, over the placid surface of the pool. He did not see the profound effect the name had on Viktor Nikiforov. “I am only saying that I understand. Because it’s family.”

_“You_ were family too,” Viktor gasped like it would kill him. “Yuuri--”

“Come here.” Helplessly, Viktor did as he was told. He went to Yuuri, stopping just short of gathering up Yuuri’s hands in Viktor’s and pressing them to his face and begging _please_.

When Yuuri made as if to take Viktor’s hand--his left one--Viktor flinched.

Yuuri pressed something into Viktor’s palm. He said, “Good night, Viktor,” and he turned to leave. Viktor remained where he was while he watched him go.

When he finally pried open his hand, fingers numb from the force by which he had been clenching his fist, the first thing he saw was the nighttime glint of gold.

* * *

The distance between Kyoto and Hasetsu was too great for them to make the drive in a day. Yuko insisted on providing for their flight, as much as she insisted on keeping Yuri Plisetsky in her home while he healed for the next few days. The sixteen-year-old looked less than pleased with this arrangement, but Yuuri was relieved.

“Thank you, Yuko,” he murmured, folding a hand over the back of her neck and pressing their foreheads together. “Thank you. So much.”

“Oh, darling,” she said with bemusement, tousling his too-long hair affectionately. “We’ll lie low a few days, and we’ll be here when you return. Promise.”

“Promise,” Yuuri echoed. Like old times. Yuko smiled as she pulled away, and then she kissed his cheek.

“Always for you, my dear,” she said softly. And yet curiosity flashed in her gaze briefly; Yuuri did not overlook it. He turned away.

He addressed Takeshi as well. “Thank you for lending me your home,” he said, bowing formally at the waist. Yuko’s husband laughed, and then pulled him into an embrace that made Yuuri stiffen at first, and then not. He unclenched his jaw and nodded minutely.

“You’re welcome any time, Katsuki,” Nishigori Takeshi told him warmly, and then his voice dropped. “And if you ever have any more issues with the Russians, you know where to find us.”

“Thank you.” Yuuri stepped back. “I wish you and your daughters the best.” He bowed again, for good measure. He felt as if he was coming apart at the seams. Everything was ending. His final days had suddenly come upon him so fast that Yuuri realized only now he had forgotten to savor the living in between them.

He tried to memorize Nishigori Takeshi’s voice, the tattoos up his arms, Yuko’s lips against Yuuri’s cheek, their daughter Lutz who had pursued him all the previous afternoon chanting up up up until Yuuri had finally picked her up and spun her, and how Yuko had laughed. He tried to memorize her tone of jest when she had said every considered children, Yuuri? and the apparent mortified expression he had made. He couldn’t, and he realized on the jet that he was panicking.

Everything was ending. Katsuki Yuuri, for all his talents and connections and unsavory means of getting his way, couldn't stop it.

“Breathe.” Yuuri looked wildly to his right; Phichit Chulanont stood beside him. He spoke quietly, with apparent concern for Yuuri’s dignity. “You’ve come this far. This is the easy part.”

The easy part. Yuuri attempted a nod. He felt as if he might throw up.

He said, “There’s no easy part,” and found he missed the ubiquitous weight of the gold wedding band in his pocket.

“They’re not cruel people, Yuuri,” Phichit said gently. “It will be okay.”

Yuuri didn't think so. He shook his head, felt nausea rising in him again. “I hate flying,” he muttered.

“That still surprises me,” Phichit changed the subject mercifully, his tone enviously easy. “I thought you’d love all things luxury, including private jets.”

Yuuri gripped the edge of the little table tightly. “Cars,” he said through clenched teeth. “I like cars.” Being in the air made him doubly anxious. Too much could go wrong in the air. Additionally, flying now always reminded him of that which he would rather forget, like spending the majority of his youth trafficking cocaine to Shanghai so Minako could make money.

“It’s a short flight,” Phichit amended. “Then we drive the rest of the way anyway.”

“Yeah.” Yuuri bit off the word sharply. Phichit Chulanont eyed him like he had something else to say.

“There was a big window in the room I slept in last night,” he began. “You could see the gardens from it, if you wanted to.”

Yuuri closed his eyes. “How interesting.”

“You said you would be careful.”

“I don't want to talk about this.”

“Just because he isn't actively trying to kill you today doesn't mean tomorrow--”

“I don't.” Yuuri’s teeth snapped together, drawing blood from his tongue. Copper filled his mouth. “Want to talk about this.”

“I’m sorry.” Phichit nodded, head bobbing like he would never stop. “I overstepped. I’m sorry.” He made as if to go. Fiercely, Yuuri caught his arm as he passed, and Phichit gasped in surprise.

“Don’t go.” He couldn't be alone with his thoughts now. Pride, something to prove to Phichit, himself, and Viktor Nikiforov too, prevented him from even glancing in Viktor’s direction. “Please.”

Phichit blinked. He said, “Okay.” He said, “We’ve never talked about Detroit, have we?”

* * *

 

Hasetsu hadn’t changed in ten years. Yuuri drove, because he was the only one who knew the way, and with his hands on the steering wheel it was simpler to justify his white knuckles than it would be if he rode passenger side. He felt it was very possible that his lungs would collapse.

The streets were dark. There was no possibility of Yuuri losing his way, and yet he worried about that too.

His parents’ home was barely visible against the night sky when he stopped the car. Parked it. He said, “We walk from here.”

He buttoned his collar all the way, shrugged off his jacket, messed with his hair. His glasses would have made him slightly less recognizable--the younger, vainer Yuuri wouldn’t have been caught dead in public in the cheap blue frames his mother had bought him as a teenager--but those were in Russia now. There was no way to disguise the ink crawling up his neck either; he hoped it would be dark enough to avoid garnering attention.

To Viktor Nikiforov, he said, “Bring your gloves.”

Phichit was not pleased with the method by which Yuuri disposed of the Fuchū lackey keeping watch on his parents. When Viktor Nikiforov broke the man’s neck, wearing his gloves and on Yuuri’s command, Phichit Chulanont threw up.

“Get up,” Yuuri snapped lowly, pulling Phichit roughly up by his shoulders. “You’re making a scene.”

“I didn’t--” He looked as if he might vomit again, this time on Yuuri’s front. Yuuri considered slapping him for a moment, then thought better of such things. The man was already concussed. Phichit managed to choke out, “Accessory to murder,” and then Yuuri let him go.

“Collaborating with us for so long would already earn you at least fifteen years, Chulanont,” Yuuri said lowly. “And you wouldn't hang for this anyway. I take responsibility.”

He could see that this didn’t comfort him. “That's not the point,” Phichit protested, voice rising too sharply now. “He didn’t--I--he’s just one man, Yuuri. That could have been me--”

“Then be grateful it wasn’t.” Viktor Nikiforov removed his gloves and flattened them against Phichit’s chest; the latter’s hands fluttered to accept them before he apparently realized what they were. His expression was horrified. “Yes?”

“Fuck you, don’t _threaten_ me--” His bravery appeared to resurface briefly, buoyed by his hatred of Viktor Nikiforov. “You’re both going to get me arrested because you can't resolve a single one of your problems without _murder--”_

“Shut up.” His palms itched, but Yuuri did not hit either of them. He dragged a hand down his face in exhaustion. “Let's go.”

“I hate this,” Phichit muttered still, though he followed Yuuri obediently. “If you get me killed it's a fucking plague on both your houses.”

Viktor’s drawl pursued him: “Come up with that all by yourself?”

“Yeah,” Phichit snapped lowly. “Like it?”

“Not really, no.”

Yuuri silenced them both with a murderous glare. Phichit ducked his head; Viktor Nikiforov hardly blinked.

The door to his family home was locked; it was nighttime, after all, and even the typical Katsuki kindness (the type which, it had been noted, appeared to skip a generation) would not keep a highly infamous family such as Yuuri’s from taking the mildest of precautions.

Yuuri broke the lock.

More difficult of a feat was stepping over the threshold, and Yuuri had to brace himself heavily against the door jamb when he finally did so. The only reason he did it in the first place was because Viktor Nikiforov had reached out and touched his shoulder, and whatever feeling--revulsion, magnetism, bravery--it instilled in Katsuki Yuuri made him want to flee the contact. He stepped inside, and suddenly he was ten years younger than twenty-seven, and he felt like sobbing.

Voices rose from kitchen, and he recognized them all. Mari’s, low and a bit more brittle now, since she had taken with a peculiar ferocity to smoking her lungs to their death by thirty-five. Hiroko’s, which had always been warm and inviting and which made him tremble now. And too, Toshiya (his father his father his _father_ ), less outspoken than the other two and still amused. Happy. Evidently, they had not heard the break-in.

Yuuri was turning to leave, to flee, when someone caught him about the shoulders, and a voice was whispering fiercely, “You can do this, Yura, I believe in you, you can do this--”

The noise from the kitchen had fallen, faded. Yuuri found he was trembling.

With an edge of fear to her tone, his mother called out, “Hello?”

Viktor Nikiforov reached upward and traced with his thumb the swell of Katsuki Yuuri’s bottom lip.

Yuuri jerked backward, blinked too suddenly, and there was no turning back now. He had cried out, however softly, when Viktor had touched him, and from the nearby room Mari’s voice drifted to him: “I’ll go check.”

And he couldn’t wait here at the doorstop like a fucking coward for his older sister to discover him, guilty as he was, and so Yuuri beat her to the entryway.

Standing before his family now, for the first time in a decade, Yuuri began to fret that he should have brought his jacket. He should have fixed his hair, he should have ironed his shirt (ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous), he should be looking nicer for his parents’ sake and he should be remembering how to breathe and the room shouldn't be _spinning_ as it was--

He braced himself against the wall and did not collapse to the floor. Before him, Katsuki Mari said quietly, “Oh my god,” and their mother breathed something which sounded like his name before she dropped an empty hand-painted bowl that had been in the family for ages and let it shatter across the ground.

Yuuri said, “Mari,” and then she punched him.

It was a good punch, across the jaw, and it would have sent him reeling even if he hadn't been unsteady on his feet to begin with, and as he was it dropped him quiet easily to the floor. Then Mari was yelling, and his mother screamed, and on his hands and knees Yuuri tasted blood which meant Mari had split his lip. He wondered hazily who had taught her to punch like that. Yuuri was a bit jealous it hadn't been him.

Hands on his back--gentle, guiding things--helped him stand. When he did so, the room went quiet. Yuuri’s head was still spinning, but he did not miss the few quick steps Mari took to put distance between herself and Yuuri. Yuuri closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and whispered accusingly, “I wanted to do this alone.”

“You just got floored by your older sister with one punch, Yura.” His hands were still on his back. Yuuri shrugged them off. “I figured you needed help.”

“Go.” The single word was fierce, from between teeth, because Yuuri was enraged. How _dare_ he take this moment from him, how _dare_ he complicate the mess Yuuri already entertained by appearing in his parents’ home before Yuuri could even explain, how _dare_ he even be here when this was Yuuri’s and no one else’s, how _dare_ he--

When Viktor stepped back, Yuuri swayed. His mother whispered, “Yuuri,” and Yuuri swiped surreptitiously at his cheeks and nodded.

“It’s me.”

And Hiroko, unexpectedly--terrifyingly--was making her way to him. Yuuri stiffened, found he was still trembling minutely as she did so, but there was nothing he could do to stop her. Mari’s eyes were still on Viktor Nikiforov’s shadowy presence behind Yuuri, and she lifted a gentle hand to keep her mother where she was and could not. Hiroko stood before Yuuri, and then she placed both her hands against his cheeks.

“Ma--” Mari began, and then she stopped. Yuuri laid both his quivering hands over Hiroko’s, even as his mother looked up at him seriously, even as she said, “You never came home,” and Yuuri realized that he was going to cry.

“Couldn’t come home,” he whispered. “Wasn’t welcome.”

“Yuuri,” his mother said sternly. She had to shift to the tips of her toes to mess with his hair, pulling back his untouched bangs so he looked more like he did in the photographs. It was all she had seen of him for a decade, after all. Photographs, and his televised trial. “Wayward. But never unwelcome.”

“Oh,” Yuuri said, because they had _said_ , hadn’t they? They had told him he had to leave. “I didn’t--”

But then Hiroko was pulling away, and Yuuri was coming to his senses, and he scraped into a low, low bow with such haste it made him dizzy. How stupid. He spent three years in Russia and it made him forget all his fucking manners. His mother must be humiliated. He was not the son she had tried to raise, and every moment in her home proved it further.

He was still shaking. This realization, which occurred to him as an afterthought, seemed to only make him shake more. His face was numb.

“Yuuri.” His mother touched his hair carefully. Yuuri closed his eyes. “Please stand up.”

Mechanically, Yuuri did as he was told. Hiroko said, “Why did you come home? Why now?”

“Mama,” Mari whispered, and this time she did succeed in wrapping her fingers around her mother’s shoulder, guiding her gently back a few steps so she was not within Yuuri’s reach. “Mama, please.”

“I’m sorry.” They were the first words he said to them all--his sister and his father too, not just his mother--and what fitting words they were. He said them once and found that they rang nicely out from his mouth, and so he said them again. Then he found he could not stop. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry--”

Another light touch to his back, between his shoulder blades. He was making a fool of himself. Viktor Nikiforov was simply telling him to stop.

Yuuri stopped.

“It’s late,” said his father, finally, after a long silence had drawn between them and Yuuri had begun to lean heavily against the doorway just to maintain his fragile grip on this reality. He was suddenly dead tired, and it was the kind of weariness that settled deep in one’s bones and was less from physical exhaustion than from complete hopelessness. He half-entertained going to sleep now and never waking up, just to make it easier on the rest of them. “Are the three of you going to stay the night?”

Now, finally, Yuuri began to cry.

* * *

Viktor Nikiforov found he liked the Katsukis, even if they did not like him.

Yuuri’s parents did not openly express their loathing, but it was easy enough to perceive. He was the man who had ruined their son. It was evident in the way Katsuki Hiroko looked at him--and the way Katsuki Toshiya did not--that he would not be forgiven for such transgressions.

Yuuri’s sister, Mari, Viktor liked best. She made no niceties with him, nor did she appear to be afraid of him any longer. Viktor liked that she wasn't afraid, of either him nor Yuuri. The Katsukis were brave; evidently, that was something Yuuri had been born with.

“Why are you back in Japan?” Hiroko spoke English, for Viktor’s benefit. Yuuri had been the one to request that she did so. “It’s not--” _Safe_ , she had meant to say, but Viktor knew she was likely thinking the word _safe_ sounded silly now, with two of the world’s most wanted men now kneeling at her table.

“It’s less safe in Russia presently,” Yuuri said quietly. He had stopped trembling, at least. Viktor knew, because he knew Yuuri, that his newly calm demeanor was a falsification, but he also knew that it would hold for a while longer before he broke. (When he broke, it would be terrible. But Viktor did not concern himself with the inevitable at the moment.) “But we can’t stay.”

Hiroko nodded. Like he had so long ago, using photographs, Viktor tried to find pieces of Yuuri in her. In person, it was easier.

She moved her hands like Yuuri. When she spoke, they ventured to her throat, to push her glasses up her face, to tug at her sleeves. Every fluttery hand gesture was distinctly _Yuuri_.

Likewise, he found traits in the rest of his family that made Viktor ache for their familiarity to him. The way Mari curled her lip when she was angry (as she was now) was a mirror reflection of the way Yuuri had looked at Viktor so many times in the past months. The precise way Toshiya folded his hands, the careful, calculated serenity on his face, was so Katsuki it hurt. This was Yuuri’s family. Viktor didn't know how he had ever thought there was nothing alike between them.

Beside him, Yuuri was very still. Viktor suppressed the desire to touch him--chastely, just to remind him that he was here. “I want you all to come with,” Yuuri said, and the room dropped several degrees in temperature. Toshiya shook his head. Mari said, “Fuck no.”

“Mari,” her mother said quietly, but Mari was already standing, stalking away.

“I’m not going fucking anywhere with you.” She spoke at Yuuri accusingly, and then her eyes flashed to Viktor. “And I’m not going to allow him in this house. I won’t.”

“Mari,” Yuuri echoed his mother, his voice less soft than hers by nature. “Please listen.”

“No! Fuck you,” Mari snapped. “Ten _years_ , Yuuri. You ruined us, fucking around with _him_ in Russia, and then you don't even have the decency to die just once? Do you know how hard it has been here without you, wondering? Every time we get the fucking _paper_ you're on it, dead and then alive and then bleeding out in Spain and then executed in fucking prison and then alive and fucking _murdering_ in Russia again. Do you know what that’s _like?”_

“No,” Yuuri confessed quietly. Mari seized this admittance vindictively.

“No! You don’t!” She slammed her palm against the wall to illustrate her point. “And you do it all in our fucking name, and no one had spoken to us in this town in years because _she_ refuses to denounce you--”

Hiroko murmured something in Japanese. Mari did not stop.

“--and you appear to think that placating us with blood money is how to fix it. We don't need your goddamn _money,_ Yuuri.”

“Mari,” Yuuri murmured. “Please stop.”

“Shut up.” She whirled on Viktor Nikiforov. _“You_ pay attention. This is fucking on you.”

“Mari--”

“And now you want us to _leave?_ When this is all we have, you want us to fucking pack up and go _where?_ Russia? Tokyo? Where exactly do you plan to smuggle your family, now that you've taken the last thing they have, Katsuki Yuuri?”

“Please, Mari.”

_“No._ Fuck you. You really thought you could show up after a decade and--and it would be okay? Are you that fucking vain now, Yuuri, that you thought we would love you unconditionally? God, you did, didn't you? _Look_ at you!”

She covered her mouth with her hands, and her shoulders began to shake. Between him and Phichit, who had remained silent the majority of the hour, Yuuri got up from the table. Viktor did not grab his hand like he had the sudden urge to do--but his fingers twitched.

Katsuki Yuuri stood and went to his sister, and he embraced her. Viktor Nikiforov watched her bury her face in his shoulder, her hands fist desperately in the fabric of his shirt and in his hair, and then he looked away. When he did so, he met the gaze of Katsuki Hiroko.

She was watching him, even after Viktor dipped his head into a short, apologetic bow and looked back up. Katsuki Yuuri’s mother tilted her head. Viktor didn't know what her expression meant.

“We can’t leave this,” Toshiya said quietly, and he sounded rather like Yuuri when he said it. “I’m sorry. You can't ask that of us.”

“They’ll ruin you.”

It was Phichit who had spoken. When the rest of them turned to look at him, he did not cower. He lifted his chin.

“You think it’s brave, or honorable, to reject what he’s offering, because of who he is. I know. But they’ll ruin you within the week. They’ll take the onsen, destroy you financially, probably arrest your daughter on false charges simply because they can. All because you didn’t leave when Yuuri offered it.”

“And who the _fuck_ are you to say so?” Mari snapped. Phichit shrugged, like the answer was _nobody_.

“I worked for them,” he said. “Your continued safety was contingent on Katsuki Yuuri doing exactly what I said for quite a few months.”

“It’s not a threat,” Yuuri said softly. “It's not. But please. Come with us.”

Silence, heavier than Viktor had ever known. Hiroko broke it when she said gently, “Mari, show Yuuri upstairs please,” and Yuuri’s sister did. They left Viktor Nikiforov with Phichit Chulanont, kneeling carefully at the family table of a man they had both designed to destroy, and then save, at different points in their lives. An unwise devotion to Katsuki Yuuri was the only thing they could boast to have in common, and yet it was enough.

* * *

 

Mari took him to his old bedroom. Yuuri hardly recognized it.

Every surface was covered in newspapers, and every single one was about him. Yuuri picked up one emblazoned with the bold Japanese headline _Kabukicho Crime Goes International Under Rule of Katsuki Yuuri_. It was dated five years previous, and the faded photograph on the front was of Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov standing with arms spread wide on the balcony of a wealthy Petersburg club, looking young and deadly and--Yuuri noted regrettably--coked out of their minds.

“That’s embarrassing,” he murmured, and Katsuki Mari snorted derisively.

“Mom cried over that one.”

“Oh.”

“And this one.” Mari held up another paper, not generously enough to allow him to read the full headline, but enough that Yuuri could glimpse the infamous Moscow party photo of him draped languidly across Viktor Nikiforov’s lap, holding a martini. That one had become chronic tabloid fodder upon its taking, largely because it was Yuuri’s national debut as the deadly Viktor Nikiforov's new toy, as well as because later that night Yuuri had attended a performance by the Bolshoi slightly drunk and more than a few ballet-goers had testified to seeing Katsuki creep a bit too far into Nikiforov’s seat and take particular, too great interest in the latter’s neck and mouth. Yuuri had seen the photo with enough frequency that it had ceased to embarrass him, except for now, accusing as it was in his older sister’s hands.

“In my defense,” Yuuri mumbled. “I didn't hold my liquor as well back then as I do now.”

Mari ignored the attempt at apologetic jest. She held up another paper, and this headline was easily legible. _Hasetsu Native Katsuki Arrested in Spain._ The photo was mercifully not one of Yuuri post-gunshot wound, but perhaps the one of Viktor guiding him firmly by the arm through the evening-lit streets of Barcelona stung more deeply anyway. They both looked deadly serious, but something to Yuuri’s face--perhaps the angle--made him look a bit naive too.

“Why do you keep all these?” Yuuri asked, to get Mari to put the article down. Staring at it made his palms itch. Mari did put it down, and then looked at him flatly.

“We hardly have photos of us all as a happy family to replace them, do we, Yuuri?” She held up a rolled newspaper, then tossed it to him. “Mom started to collect them years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” He unrolled the local newspaper she had thrown to him; the article read _Hasetsu Son Shot Dead in Tokyo Prison_. The photograph was, cruelly, one of his parents. “I’m sorry.”

“I don't care.” There were articles blanketing every surface of Yuuri’s childhood bedroom. Katsuki Mari swept her forearm across the bed, sending whole newspapers tumbling to the floor. Then she sat. “I don't care.”

She very clearly did care, because she kept swiping at her eyes, and when Yuuri ventured to speak again, she shook her head.

“Please don't,” she whispered, and Yuuri didn't. He stood silent and still for a very long time, until his sister looked up from her hands and said, “Why did you come back?”

“I’ve wanted to come back for years,” Yuuri whispered. “But there was too much to lose.”

“There’s still too much to lose,” Mari snapped. The reply lacked both vitriol and volume. “You're going to take the onsen from us, after everything? Hasetsu, Yuuri? After everything else?”

“I don't _mean_ to,” Yuuri snarled, his palms coming down fiercely on his heavily-papered old desk. _“Christ,_ Mari, this isn't what I _want_. If it were up to me they would have ten onsens, they would own every centimeter of this town, and no one would touch any of you until the fucking ocean washed all of Hasetsu away. _That’s_ what I want for the three of you, and it kills me that I can't give it to you. Alright?”

Mari lifted her chin. She said quietly, “They would never ask for all of Hasetsu.”

Yuuri pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. His hands had begun to quiver again, like an addict experiencing withdrawal. When was the last time he had a drink, or a Xanax, or even just a nap?

“Whatever they could possibly ask for,” he vowed in a whisper. “I would give it.”

“Clearly not.” Mari’s voice had become sharp. “You never would have left in the first place.”

“Mari,” he begged, and he did deserve this. He did. But it needn't _hurt_ so much.

“Why did you bring him here?” The question made Yuuri tip back his head, bring his hands to his throat to unbutton his collar. Doing so made it marginally easier to breathe.

“When Fuchū released me--before they staged my execution--I was given orders to orchestrate his arrest.” Yuuri shook his head. “I couldn’t.”

“He tried to kill you,” Mari said flatly. Yuuri ground his teeth.

“It's not that simple.” He realized he was being snappish again. He paused. Recollected himself. “I’m sorry.” Mari blinked at him.

“Did you love him, Yuuri?” He wondered why he was always being asked that question. Hadn't it been obvious? Even in the papers, couldn't they see it? It had always felt obvious, to him.

Silently, Katsuki Yuuri nodded. Mari mirrored him.

“And do you love him now?”

This one was a bit harder. And yet, Katsuki Yuuri was nodding again before the word yes even occurred to him.

“Yuuri.” Mari sounded sad. “Men like that aren't made for love.”

“And how would you know?” He was on his feet now, moving, pacing. “How would you ever know, Mari? Are you familiar with men like Viktor Nikiforov? Are you familiar with men like _me?”_

“You’re one in the same,” Mari replied, and the gentle cutting remark made Yuuri stop his pacing. He felt as if his surroundings were spinning, and he laughed.

“I deserve that.”

“Do you believe it?”

Did he? Yuuri considered. It was a neat little hypothesis, that he and Viktor Nikiforov were capable of addiction and obsession but not of love, and yet he had encountered quite a bit of evidence in his lifetime which could easily disprove it. Viktor Nikiforov’s current presence in his parents’ kitchen, Phichit Chulanont and Yuuri drinking a bottle of cabernet on the floor of Phichit’s apartment, Yuko and Takeshi’s charity and all three of the Nishigori children who pursued Yuuri relentlessly for rides perched on his shoulders. The ache in his chest brought on by bearing witness to all these newspapers in his old bedroom, because his mother could not let go of her damned criminal of a son.

“No,” Yuuri said, and it was the truth. “No, I don't.”

From the edge of his bed, Mari looked him in the face. She smiled, like it was the answer for which she had been hoping.

* * *

Yuuri’s mother cooked. Viktor got the sense that she was the type of woman who cooked obsessively when she was upset, and that she was furious now. She did not speak to him, nor to Phichit, but she placed heaping bowls of food in front of them and withdrew without acknowledging their sheepish murmured thanks.

“She doesn’t like you.” Viktor looked at Chulanont, who had spoken, and narrowed his eyes. The latter seemed unaffected--perhaps he was no longer afraid of Viktor Nikiforov, despite still bearing plentiful evidence in cuts and bruises and minor head injuries that he really ought to fear him, or perhaps he was just stupid. Viktor didn't care for Phichit Chulanont, and so he preferred to believe it was the latter.

Within the same room, Yuuri’s parents moved around one another with the understated ease of those who knew each other intimately, and had for decades. Viktor did not look at them, for fear of them thinking he wished them ill, but he listened to their murmured conversation in a tongue he could not hope to understand. It was apparent he was not entirely subtle about this.

“You can’t speak Japanese,” Phichit accused, his voice soft and his expression light. “Why not?”

Viktor scowled. He provided no response.

“Yuuri can speak Russian,” Phichit continued, and for some reason this infuriated Viktor.

“That wasn't for my benefit,” he snapped lowly, and he thought Phichit may have smiled. “I am not discussing this.”

_“Anata.”_ Viktor’s head snapped up to face the direction from which the murmur had come, before conscious thought or common sense or pride could advise him against it. Yuuri’s mother had her palm folded carefully against his father’s cheek, and she was gazing at his face with an expression of gentle devotion. Viktor felt his heart in his mouth.

But as Katsuki Hiroko turned in his direction, evidently feeling the weight of eyes on her face, Viktor Nikiforov cast his gaze downward guiltily. He said nothing, though he had imagined fleetingly that he could have.

“Ah,” remarked Phichit Chulanont beside him, like the exchange meant something. “Good to know.”

* * *

 

“The night watch changes at seven,” Phichit was saying. “We’re leaving by four, to ensure we have a few hours on them by the time they decide to give chase.”

“That’s not nearly enough time to pack up our lives,” Mari argued. “We need a few days.”

“We can't give you a few days,” Viktor replied. “Five hours has to be enough.”

“I don’t remember asking your input on the matter,” Mari snarled back, and Viktor Nikiforov folded his hands behind his head and leaned against the wall. He shrugged, like it didn't matter to him whether or not Mari had requested his opinion in the first place, because he was right.

“I didn't realize Japanese police were so blithe about finding corpses in the front yards of a wanted criminal’s family. My apologies. In that case, take your time.”

In Russian, Yuuri snapped, “Viktor. Don't pick fights with my sister.”

In Japanese, Mari warned him sweetly, “Yuuri. I’m going to fucking kill your boyfriend.”

Yuuri had swept up the shattered remains of the bowl his mother had broken upon his arrival and now occupied himself with puzzle-piecing the shards back together. He tilted his head against the wall, slouching quietly in the corner of the room. Viktor and his sister had been at it for several minutes now, and it had ceased to be interesting as soon as Yuuri had decided they were in no danger of fighting each other physically. He had no intentions of defending Viktor from Mari, either--the former deserved all the verbal abuse she could throw at him.

Still, a gentle touch to his elbow made him start. Yuuri looked up from the few small pieces of the ceramic he cradled in his palms, and Hiroko whispered to him alone, “Please.”

Yuuri set aside the shards of the bowl and followed his mother quietly from the room.

“We’ll come with you,” Hiroko said quietly in the next room. “Regardless of what Mari says. We’ll come.”

Yuuri closed his eyes. Then he nodded. “Thank you.”

“But, Yuuri--” His mother grabbed his wrists suddenly, and Yuuri bit the inside of his cheek fiercely to quell the visceral instinctive reaction that was to _take_. To take back his hands, which his mother now folded gently in her own. He hoped she did not notice the stiffening of his shoulders, though by her tragic smile he figured she had. “Promise me you’ll come with.”

So she had guessed. Yuuri supposed it was not that difficult to do so--while Mari and Viktor and Phichit had argued semantics of an escape from the onsen, Yuuri had remained peculiarly reticent. And his mother was an observant woman, after all.

Quietly, Yuuri shook his head. “Can’t,” he murmured. “There’s more I have to fix.”

“Yuuri,” Hiroko said, and Yuuri tightened his jaw. His mother reached upwards and touched the bruising against his neck. “I haven't known you for so long. Please.”

“I _can't.”_ What about this couldn't they all understand? Katsuki Yuuri had to repent before he was worthy of his family again, and such things took time. Such things took blood.

“Does this fixing involve him?” Hiroko whispered, and Yuuri laughed softly.

“Sort of.”

“He’s not what I imagined,” his mother hummed.

“And what did you imagine?”

“Hm.” She sounded as if the question amused her. Her hands cradled his face. “Taller.”

Despite himself, Yuuri smiled. His mother traced the curve of his mouth with her fingers as if his smile was precious to her.

“Tell me what we did,” she murmured, and Yuuri said, “Oh, _no--”_

“Tell me what we did.” More firmly now. Yuuri wrapped his arms around Hiroko and pulled her closer to him.

“Nothing,” he whispered. “It was my fault. You didn't do anything.”

“There must have been something--”

“No.” Yuuri shook his head fiercely. “My decisions are not your fault. And it's my responsibility alone to atone for them.”

Against his shoulder, his mother murmured, “He’s wearing a ring. Are you marrying him, Yuuri?”

Katsuki Yuuri blinked. For a moment, he nearly echoed the words back at her. _He’s wearing a ring._

“No, mama.” He placed his palm softly against the base of her skull, rested his chin atop his mother’s head. It was strange now, to think he was tall enough to do so. It had been ten years. “No, the ring means something different.”

* * *

This time, when he found himself on the shores of Hasetsu’s coastline, it was no dreamt visitation. Yuuri could taste the ocean, the salt in the air and the spray of seawater even before he stepped onto the beach. He was alone.

For a moment, he considered wading out into the sea until the waterline passed over his head. He wondered how far he would get before the current caught him, dragged him far enough out that he could not swim back.

He hadn’t been a strong swimmer, as a kid. Mari had been better, as she had been better at most things. Yuuri had been quiet, tearful, impressionable. But he fell in love with every aspect of the world around him, which back then hadn't extended very far outside the limits of his hometown. The ocean had been the great unknown for him, and as scared of the concepts of _bigger_ and _greater_ and _more_ as he had been, Yuuri had fallen in love with that too.

It had damned him, that drive for more. But even this did not upset him, really; in the past ten years, Yuuri had become infatuated, enthralled, obsessed with damnation. Things were worth so much more when courtship of them was deadly.

He realized now, finally, that this was why. This was the reason for his binding himself to Minako in the first place, for his subsequent break of ties with the most dangerous woman in the world. For Viktor Nikiforov. For the quiet smile curving his mouth now.

It had been no accident, really. He had thought it one, for years, until now. But it wasn’t. Katsuki Yuuri had wanted this--all of it--even before he knew what all of it meant. When he was thirteen, seventeen, twenty-one, twenty-four. He still wanted it. He would never stop.

Katsuki Yuuri laughed, and the night wind stole the sound from his mouth and carried it out to sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (don't take me seriously for this but) i found this satire article on clickhole last week while doing god knows what, and thought it fitting for this particular chapter: http://www.clickhole.com/article/end-era-yakuza-has-announced-it-switching-committi-7495
> 
> more importantly, fiatlux made a playlist for ivory and gold (https://open.spotify.com/user/ohhgeeztina/playlist/060zNiQPzRUzVRp0qKL8eR?si=UAZKJaDmQ_SI0E3it_B4Fg) and it's wonderful and i love it a lot, so pls also check that out if u like.
> 
> as always, thanks for reading and all comments and kudos! xx


	20. Death With Dignity

His parents’ home was in shambles. Yuuri tried valiantly not to weep over it.

He wound his fingers in Phichit Chulanont’s dark hair, pressed his forehead against Yuuri’s own. He spoke in whispered Japanese.

“Take them to Yuko. Make sure she does as she promised me.”

“Of course.” Phichit’s voice was soft. He said, “What do I tell her about you?”

“Nothing. She’ll know.”

At this, Phichit laughed. He murmured, “I don't think so. You can't just disappear.”

“Fine.” Yuuri scowled. “Tell her to never let Minako meet her daughters.”

“Yuuri…” Phichit Chulanont sounded mournful. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Do you remember back in May, Phichit, when I told you not to confuse me for a good man?” Yuuri realized Phichit Chulanont was crying. Softly, he smiled. “It seems to me you disregarded that order as well.”

“Shut up.” Phichit Chulanont swiped beneath his eyes. Yuuri released the back of his head, then placed his hands on his shoulders.

“Don’t cry in front of my parents, Chulanont.” Phichit laughed like a sob, then clasped a hand over his mouth. “And enjoy Bangkok, when you go home. I’ve never been.”

“I could take you,” Phichit Chulanont offered quietly, against his hand. Yuuri smiled, and he nodded.

“Yes,” he lied, and Phichit knew it. “Of course.”

“Bastard,” Phichit whispered, and then he stepped back. He blinked, and then composed himself. Admirable of him. “Okay. Time to go.”

But Viktor Nikiforov looked between them then, and he said like he had always known but just dared to believe: “You're staying.”

Yuuri dragged a hand down his face. “Keen observation, Vitya.”

“Fuck you.” He said it in Russian, and Yuuri was grateful. Nevertheless, the venom behind the words made Hiroko start. “You didn't tell me?”

“I didn't think it was necessary.” That was cruel. He saw the way it hurt him and decided he would not care. “It’s time to go.”

“No.” He hadn't slept for a while, and he had begun to look a an awful lot like he needed it. Like when they were younger, and the comedown would begin to set in, and every movement would be labored and exhausted and terrible. “I’m staying as well.”

“You are not,” Yuuri snapped. “Don’t waste the little time we have by being a moron.”

“I’m staying.”

“ _Fuck_ you--”

“I’m staying.” His tone was careful, soft, but his convictions were firm. “Don’t fight me on this, Yura.”

Phichit Chulanont said quietly, “You have a better chance with company anyway.”

Yuuri threw up his hands. “When did you start siding with him?” he snapped. For a moment, Phichit looked bemused.

“I’ll make sure Yuko knows.”

His world was ending. Yuuri scowled, and then he said, “Fine. Go.”

His parents said their goodbyes. Hiroko wept as she did so. Toshiya did not, but he held Yuuri around the shoulders for several seconds longer than he needed to. “I’m sorry,” Yuuri whispered, and his father said, “I know.”

Then they left him, and the last left behind was Katsuki Mari, who tipped up her chin and did not embrace him but said in Japanese, “You’ll come back to us. No point to goodbyes.”

“Right.” Yuuri’s laugh was closer to the type of desperate gasp one made when all the oxygen had fled from one’s lungs. “No point to goodbyes.”

Mari looked to Viktor Nikiforov. “Bring my brother back alive.” Viktor nodded, bowed sincerely, though he couldn't possibly have been unaware that the odds of either of them coming out of this alive were quite slim.

“I promise,” he said quietly, and Yuuri bit down on his tongue.

“That’s binding,” Katsuki Mari murmured. “I’ll hold you to it.”

Then she turned and left, and in keeping with her convictions, there were no goodbyes.

Yuuri realized he was falling only when he ceased to do so, only when Viktor’s arms were wrapped around him and had pulled him flush against his chest, and his lips were in his hair saying, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay, Yuuri.”

Yuuri was trembling. Viktor must have expected this, a full nervous breakdown, because he lifted him quite easily and carried him to the next room, where he sat him down on a sofa. Then he pulled Yuuri’s hair back from his face, and something cool and metallic touched briefly to his forehead.

“Breathe,” he murmured, and Yuuri had his trembling hands clasped over his mouth and he couldn't breathe he couldn't breathe why couldn't he breathe? “Yuuri.”

_Breathe_.

“Yes. Good.” Somewhere, sometime, Viktor Nikiforov ran a hand along Yuuri’s shoulders, and Katsuki Yuuri shivered. “Good. Do you need anything?”

Tightly, severely, Yuuri shook his head. He peeled his fingers away from his mouth, laid them against his thighs. He was sweating.

Viktor Nikiforov did not venture to touch him further. He knew Yuuri--or at the very least, he had--and he knew Yuuri’s limits. He knew if Yuuri wanted Viktor to touch him after this, to speak, then Yuuri would initiate it. This was not Viktor’s place to give direction, nor to make assumptions about what Yuuri would find most helpful. He was no longer hovering beside him, but on the floor, on his knees, and he looked up at Yuuri quietly.

Yuuri elected for silence. Slowly, still shivering, he leaned back and placed a flat hand over his eyes. He knew by the bated quiet in the room that Viktor did not move from his place on his knees.

Finally, after several minutes, Yuuri found his voice. He said, “Get up.”

“Yura.”

“You shouldn't have stayed.” His hand slid down from over his eyes, but still Yuuri did not open them. “Feltsman wants you alive.”

“So does the FSB,” Viktor said, like the two were comparable evils. Yuuri snarled.

“This isn't _funny_ , Viktor,” he snapped. “It’s a waste. What was the point of keeping you alive if you're just going to throw it away--”

“Yura.” Finally, Yuuri opened his eyes.

“Get up.”

“What was the point of fighting so hard all your life if you’re going to give everything up now?”

“Fuck you,” Yuuri spat. “This isn't giving up, this is--this is--” He couldn't say. He didn't know how to explain that this wasn't pointless, hopeless suicide. This was saving his family. This was death with dignity. On his own terms, in his own home. On his own.

“You shouldn’t have stayed,” he whispered. “This is mine.”

“I promised Nishigori Yuko a month ago that I would keep you alive. I just promised your sister the same.” Viktor Nikiforov smiled, only slightly. “I’m a man of my word, Katsuki Yuuri.”

“Don’t mock me.” Yuuri’s fingernails carved vicious half-moons into the flesh of his palms. Viktor blinked, and then he tipped back his head farther.

“I’m not,” he murmured. He sought out Yuuri’s hands with his own, and then did nothing with them. He did not bring them to his mouth, did not entreat Yuuri to open his fingers, did nothing but drag the pad of his thumb once over Yuuri’s knuckles and then meet his gaze.

“We have three hours,” Yuuri said finally. “One of us should sleep.”

“You,” said Viktor immediately. “I’ll stay up.”

For a moment Yuuri felt his mouth twist, his eyes narrow, and then he caught himself. But Viktor did not miss the suspicion which bloomed--however briefly--on his face, and he smiled gently.

“I understand,” he murmured.

Yuuri felt the need to protest that accusing Viktor of further plot to kill him hadn’t been his intention--it was simply that old habits died hard. He opened his mouth, and then closed it.

After all, what use would three hours of sleep bring him? If he really was going to die here, with the dawn, did he want to spend his last few hours unconscious?

He realized now that he had been staring. He realized now that there were a wealth of options here which involved Viktor being on his knees. He realized now that he wanted this, badly.

“Viktor,” he whispered. “I…”

“Can you stand?”

Of course he could stand, but that wasn’t the issue here. Katsuki Yuuri frowned.

“I…” He didn't know what he meant to say, and that made saying anything at all quite difficult. Viktor still had his hands in his own, and as Yuuri watched his mouth grew softer with some unknown entreaty. He did not look Yuuri in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor said quietly, abruptly. “For the past six years.”

“Oh.” Yuuri didn't want this anymore. Not if Viktor was going to apologize like that. He murmured, “Yes.”

“I know it doesn't matter,” Viktor continued softly, a twinge of desperation to it all. “But I wanted you to know anyway. That I am.”

“Yes,” Yuuri repeated, and in his head he thought _stupid stupid stupid_ what had he expected? A confession akin to his own? A pipe dream. Viktor was weak in many ways, but not like Yuuri.

“All six years?”

“Hmm?” Viktor had been distracted by his hands. He looked up now, and Yuuri thought he saw a flicker of guilt in his face. _That_ was Viktor's weakness. The physical. Nothing more. “I’m sorry, I--”

“All six years?” There was something, a downturn to his own mouth, that was a bit too near to pleading. Yuuri couldn’t stop himself. “That's what you're apologizing for?”

Viktor Nikiforov scanned his face. The change in his expression was subtle: a loosening of his jaw, a widening of his eyes, grief in the tear of his mouth. “Oh, Yuuri,” he said.

* * *

Phichit Chulanont hated to be the bearer of bad news. He especially hated to be so when the recipients of such news were international criminals who had proven time and time again their lack of misgivings about eviscerating him where he stood.

Nishigori Yuko stood on the tarmac, and when she saw Phichit usher Yuuri’s family off the plane alone, she shook her head. Then she was stalking to just below the stairway, and she had Phichit Chulanont by the collar and she said through fiercely clenched teeth, _“Where is he?”_

“This is making a bad impression,” Phichit choked, but Nishigori did not appear to care what the Katsukis thought of her. She shook him, violently.

“Where-- _is_ \--he?”

Phichit coughed. Said, “He stayed behind. His own decision.”

Yuko let him go.

“Why would you let him do that?” she asked calmly. Phichit rubbed resentfully at his throat, where his collar had caught and then closed off his windpipe.

“Do you think I could have stopped him?”

“I thought giving him orders was your job.”

“I don't work for Fuchū anymore,” Phichit said. “And you know damn well he didn't listen to me when I did.”

This, at least, was irrefutable. Nishigori tipped back her head, and she laughed.

“He promised,” she whispered, likely to herself. Phichit considered the subtlest ways to remind her that they had an audience.

But immediately she proved that she didn't need the reminder. Nishigori Yuko righted herself, smoothed her hair, checked that her sleeves were covering the ink on her arms as best they could. The color creeping out from beneath her collar and onto the backs of her hands was unconcealable, but Phichit figured she had forfeited all guise of a respectable woman of the law when she grabbed him by the collar snarling about Katsuki Yuuri anyway.

Yuko said, “My apologies. Nishigori Yuko.” She bowed deeply. “I’m a friend of your son.”

“Does he have many of those?” Katsuki Mari. She had wept on the flight to Kyoto, and the bravado was a clear attempt to disguise the tenderness of her face and redness of her eyes. Fortunately, Yuko smiled.

“I believe I remain the only one,” she said, and then she said more softly now, “You’re Mari.”

“Nishigori,” Toshiya echoed. “I’ve done some reading since--since recent years. You run the south.”

“Not just me, surely,” Yuko laughed good-naturedly. “But yes. The south is ours, I suppose.”

“You and…”

“My husband, nowadays.” Yuko placed her hand lightly against Hiroko’s shoulder and guided her in the direction of the car. Katsuki’s mother stiffened at the contact, and Yuko removed her hand without comment on the matter. “I have a family. And I don’t care for doing business with Russians.”

Phichit snorted. Nishigori looked at him in what could have been bemusement. “It always leads to trouble, in my experience,” she murmured.

She made Phichit Chulanont sit in the passenger side. He scanned the road while she removed from her pocket her cell phone and tapped something quick and furious out on the screen. When she had slid the device back into her jacket and returned her full attention to driving, Katsuki Hiroko prompted nervously, “How long have you known my son?”

Yuko cast her gaze into the rearview mirror. Phichit fidgeted. She murmured, “Fourteen years.”  
  
“So as long as...”

“Yes.” She looked firmly out at the road now. Her hands moved nervously on the wheel, fingers curling and uncurling and knuckles whitening. “As long as that.”

“Oh.” Silence was suffocation within the armored vehicle the Nishigoris drove. Hiroko said tremulously, “Could you--could you tell me about him, then? I’m afraid--afraid I don't know him very well anymore.”

Softly, Nishigori Yuko nodded. “Of course,” she said, and Phichit hesitated to look at her for fear he would witness her crying. “Yes, of course.”

* * *

Viktor Nikiforov’s hands were cool. He carded them through Yuuri’s hair softly and said, “You still need a haircut, Yuuri.”

“Mm.” There was really no point now. But Yuuri was already going to die, and so he humored him. “Cut it for me then.”

“Oh.” A gently nervous laugh. Yuuri let his head roll back against the wall, and Viktor’s fingers fell just short of his face. “I think I’m a bit out of practice for that.”

Yuuri looked at him and said nothing. Viktor studied his fingernails and then said, “Does your father use a straight razor?”

Yuuri pointed wordlessly down the corridor. He remained where he was sat on the floor against the wall, and Viktor got up from his knees and slipped away in the direction in which he had pointed.

When Viktor returned, he confessed, “There are pictures of you in your parents’ bedroom,” and even at this blatant admission of disregard for his family’s privacy, Yuuri lacked the energy to be angry.

He said, “I imagine there are.”

“I didn't…I didn't know that's what you looked like.” He sat beside Yuuri on the floor and folded his legs beneath him. Yuuri imagined the vision would be rather comical to onlookers: infamous Viktor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri sitting cross-legged on the floor of an old Japanese house which had seen wealthier days. Two soon-to-be-dead men being gentle with one another, like they hadn't been in years.

Yuuri was suddenly compelled by the irrational desire to document this moment, to photograph it for his mother’s collection. She deserved at least one of him and Viktor in which they did not look so impossibly cruel.

An exhale. Yuuri echoed, “That’s what I looked like.”

Carefully, his cool fingers quick and achingly aware not to linger too long on Yuuri’s face, Viktor Nikiforov turned Yuuri’s gaze away from him. “You look like your parents.”

“Like my father,” Yuuri agreed tranquilly. “When he was young.”

“Are you sure you want--” Yuuri waved a conciliatory hand before he finished. Behind him, he felt Viktor Nikiforov nod. “Okay.”

He cut his hair in relative silence. Often he would steady his dominant hand with the other so he did not shake, or brace the edge of his palm against the highest part of Yuuri’s jaw, or murmur to himself in Russian which was not meant for Yuuri’s understanding, and so Yuuri did not bother to listen. Yuuri sat in meditative quiet, and when his eyes drifted closed he did not correct the matter. Only at one point did Viktor cut him with the razor, and his whispered curse was enough to prompt a break in Yuuri from his quiet daze.

Yuuri ran a hand over the back of his head and felt dampness where the blood had already begun to well. Viktor apologized in quick, repentant Russian. “I didn't meant to,” he whispered, and Yuuri nodded serenely.

“Okay,” he said, and nothing more. He gestured for Viktor to continue.

But Viktor Nikiforov hesitated, and the weighted silence sounded like _that's all?_ Yuuri closed his eyes.

“Viktor,” he said. “Okay.”

Behind him, the sharp intake of breath, and then a soft metallic clatter as Viktor set down the scissors and Yuuri’s father’s razor. Then, the shock of abrupt skin to skin contact, as Viktor pressed his face to the back of Yuuri’s neck, wrapped his fingers around his shoulders, said nothing and did nothing for several eternal moments. Katsuki Yuuri went still.

Then he reached upward, back with his left hand and softly, slowly, laid his fingers flat against the back of Viktor Nikiforov’s skull. Yuuri, also, said nothing.

Against his neck, against the palm of his hand, Viktor Nikiforov nodded.

* * *

“I was fourteen when I met Yuuri.”

Yuko bounced a drowsy triplet on her knee. The little girl reached up with grasping hands, and Yuko picked her up beneath her arms and passed her off to Takeshi. She had woken up when Yuko had brought Yuuri’s family home, and had immediately wanted her mother. The sun had not yet risen, and Yuko hoped to get a few more hours of peace in the house before the triplets woke again with a vengeance. She needed time to mourn.

“He was a good kid.” Yuuri’s mother and father sat across from her at the table. Yuko rubbed at her wrists quietly. “A really good kid. I wanted more for him than this.”

“Did you?” Yuuri’s father--Toshiya was his name. He looked like Yuuri, in the way one looks like their children who will never grow old like they have. Resemblance through what could have been. “It seems to me he’s been very successful at what he does.”

Nishigori Yuko propped her elbows on the table. The late summer heat had enticed her into rolling up her sleeves, and the koi tattoo she shared with Yuuri was clearly visible on her forearm. Yuko ran a hand over her face. “That was my fault. He was always trying to protect me.”

She said, “He didn’t choose Russia over here, I want you to know. Minako--you’ve heard of her, surely, she owns my name now like she owned Yuuri’s back then--Minako had always wanted Russia for Yuuri. But he only went because of me.”

“He was always doing things for me. He broke his hand once, defending me in Seoul, and he was constantly taking the blame in Tokyo for mistakes I had made. He took the Plisetsky deal because he knew I couldn't stomach Russia, because I couldn’t handle Viktor Nikiforov, and because he could. Yuuri was selfless.”

“Was,” Yuuri’s mother echoed, and Yuko flinched fractionally.

“I don't mean it in that way,” she corrected hastiIy. “I only mean--he was different after Russia. He got involved in the types of things we had only dealt business in here in Japan--we sold the idea of glamorous crime in Tokyo, and in Russia Yuuri lived it. When he came back, he was different.”

That was the best way to gloss over the culture of easy drugs Yuuri had found in Saint Petersburg, the transformation of cocaine in his life from something that was a fast means to making a living to a fix-all wonderdrug that made leaving home exciting rather than terrifying. Yuko guessed that his parents did not want to hear about their son’s predilection for illegal substances any more than Yuko had. She continued.

“And he had found someone else to be selfless for.” Softly, Nishigori Yuko smiled. “I hated that.”

Katsuki Toshiya blinked, and then he inclined his head. Silently. Yuko bowed her head too, and then went on.

“When we were still kids he told me stories all the time about Hasetsu. He called it _home_ right until he left for Russia--when he was sick or hurt or Minako had ordered him to do something particularly awful, he would ask me to take him home.” Despite herself, Yuko laughed. “In the beginning I thought he meant Tokyo, but he didn't love Tokyo. He loved Hasetsu.”

Katsuki Hiroko closed her eyes. The envy Yuko felt at the easy, unquestioning way her hand sought out Toshiya’s on the table and entwined their fingers was not on her own behalf.

“I know you know this, but once you sign on to something like the Okukawa family, you don't leave. You can’t leave. You can run, but if Minako likes you she will find you.” Yuko spread her hands. “And if she doesn’t like you, she will find you then too. The only way out is to die.”

Yuko spared them both a soft smile.

“Yuuri knew that. I can’t presume to be familiar with his thoughts now, but I believe that he still knows that.” She realized now that she was crying, in front of his parents. How embarrassing. How unprofessional. “I’m sorry. I don't mean to--”

Arms encircled her chest, pulling her flush against a body too small and soft to be Takeshi’s. Yuko blinked, and then she laughed in a way that sounded like a sob. She buried her face in Katsuki Hiroko’s hair. There was too much of Yuuri in his mother. Yuko couldn't take it.

“Thank you,” Yuko murmured, and she meant it.

* * *

“I had hoped to at least make it to thirty.”

Yuuri looked up from across his parents’ kitchen. He said, “Mm.”

“I know I don’t have the right to expect very much.” He watched Katsuki Yuuri lean against the counter tiredly. “But I hadn't thought thirty quite so ambitious.”

“Everything is ambitious for us.” Yuuri smiled. “You know that.”

Viktor Nikiforov sighed. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “Dying young is overrated.”

There was hesitation before Yuuri’s reply. “At least you’ll always be pretty.”

“Mm.” He felt how Yuuri moved to him as he felt the workings of his own body, like second nature. He did not open his eyes, for fear of frightening him away.

A hand slid softly against his throat. Katsuki Yuuri’s thumb wore carefully away at the curve of his jaw. He said, “Vitenka.”

“Mm.”

“What do you hope to accomplish by staying?” Yuuri asked.

Viktor did not answer his question. Instead, he said, “Show me Hasetsu,” and it was a whisper, a prayer.

Katsuki Yuuri hummed. The lilt to his voice made it sound as if he had smiled, just briefly. “Why?”

“Because I want to know you again.” _Because we have so little time._ It was an answer to his first question too, perhaps, though Viktor had not been brave enough to say it in response then.

“There’s nothing left of me,” Yuuri murmured. “You know it all.”

“No.” There was more. There was always more. One couldn't know all of Katsuki Yuuri; such a thing was impossible. There was so much of him, labyrinthine corridors and cold abandoned rooms and quiet velvet passages. Knowing him was like knowing a house which was charmed to be in constant movement--even if one lived inside, there were always secrets. Always hidden things.

“Well,” Yuuri said, like he was hesitant to give Hasetsu away. And Viktor understood that hesitation, but it did not keep him from wanting. He wanted so badly, it was a physical ache in him. If Hasetsu, Yuuri’s hometown here by the ocean, would help him imagine what Yuuri had been as a child, perhaps he could soothe that ache. The ache of not knowing, and of not being able to have. “In return for something of yours, perhaps.”

Viktor tipped downward his chin. He replied softly, “There’s nothing left of me. You have it all.”

“Vitenka,” Yuuri murmured, gently. It was a child’s name, or a lover’s. Yakov had used it when he wanted Viktor to be brought to heel through humiliation, and Yuuri had used it when he wanted Viktor to melt through his fingers. Viktor did the latter now.

“I missed you,” he whispered desperately, sounding utterly pathetic. He tilted up his face like a begging man, like a repenting sinner. “I missed you so much.”

Katsuki Yuuri looked him in the face and said nothing. He did not kiss him. His hand still moved, barely perceptible, against the angle of his jaw.

“What do you hope to accomplish by staying?” he asked again, and it was very clear the question was haunting him. His gaze was hollow, his expression afraid. Viktor’s heart hurt.

(Dark, dark eyes. One could drown in them. Viktor had, plenty a time.)

“I’m keeping you alive, Yura,” he murmured. “That’s all.”

It was a lie, and Yuuri knew it. But the avoidance of the real issue appeared to relieve him. The guilt still sat heavy in Viktor Nikiforov’s mouth, but such things simply couldn't be helped. Not when one was a coward.

* * *

It had scarcely been four months since Grigori Beskudnikov had last been to Japan. He was significantly less pleased to be here now, though this particular business trip was in a similar vein of work, and this mood was partially due to the fact that he was currently three fingers shorter than his last trip.

_“Fucking_ drug lords,” he spat in the passenger seat of a rental Audi, using his teeth to tug his sleeve down to his wrist. His fully functional hand was currently holding his cell phone to his ear, and the Japanese agent on the receiving end did not appear to be particularly taken with his eloquence. “I’m going to take out his eyes.”

“That’s none of my concern,” said the man laconically on the phone. “Though I’d advise you to keep the promises of treason to yourself.”

“It’s not treason if I leave him alive,” Grigori snapped. “And considering his Japanese record is clean and I don’t even exist in this country, I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to him and you couldn't stop me anyway.”

“If he is in Japan.”

“He’s in Japan.” Grigori inspected the unhealed, brutally cauterized remnants of the fingers on his left hand. Nikiforov and his man had made painfully slow work of them, removing the fingernails first, then cutting them down at each joint, asking polite questions about Grigori’s business with Katsuki Yuuri while black blood seeped out over all the paperwork on his desk. Only then had they started the burning. Grigori nearly found their expertise in torture commendable. “He’s an idiot.”

An idiot who had managed to flee Russia without the FSB’s notice for an entire day, perhaps, and an idiot who had managed to turn their best fucking hope in arresting him to his side again, perhaps, but an idiot nonetheless. Grigori would not award Nikiforov the begrudging respect the rest of the Service had--he had worked too closely with him for too long to find him anything but insufferably, stupidly smug.

Grigori Beskudnikov would be the one to finally put a bullet between the bastard’s eyes, but not before he’d made him plead for it.

“Unimportant,” said his conversation partner. “Katsuki Yuuri will be with him. Kill him, and the Japanese government will look the other way while you handle Nikiforov.”

Viktor Nikiforov’s whereabouts were still contentious. Of course, Fuchū had their strong suspicions, but in the effort to avoid a Russian-orchestrated search and subsequent bloodbath in whatever Japanese city they were believed to be holed up in, the police were declining to share such suspicions until they were confirmed. Grigori Beskudnikov was currently sitting in the private lot of a government airstrip somewhere in the north of the country, and he was becoming impatient.

“Wonderful. Call me as soon you know.” He hung up on Fuchū and stuffed the phone in his pocket. The stitches in what little remained of his left ring finger tore open again and began to bleed, and Beskudnikov watched the bandage soak with red with cold, detached bemusement.

* * *

In Yuuri’s old bedroom, Viktor Nikiforov touched his mouth to his spine.

Previously Viktor had removed Yuuri’s shirt carefully, silently. Undid each button with particular reverence, tugged slowly downward until his arms were free of the white sleeves. Yuuri had said nothing of the ritualistic process while it happened, nor after Viktor had undressed him. When Viktor finally looked at his face he had found nothing there but quiet calm. Yuuri’s lips were parted slightly as if in awe, and he was silent.

So Viktor continued, laying his palms flat against his shoulder blades, tracing with the heels of his hands the swells of the scars Yuuri had received in Fuchū. The muscles in his back tightened, involuntarily, and Viktor withdrew his hands. He, too, said nothing.

And he did not return his hands to his skin until Yuuri’s shoulders sloped downward again, not until he turned his face slightly to the side and closed his eyes. Viktor knew this expression of his, and he knew it was permission to go on.

Viktor pushed him gently against the bare wall, turning him by the shoulders so his back was laid flat against the cool surface, and Katsuki Yuuri looked at him with dark, heavy eyes. Viktor kissed the cool skin just above them.

Then Viktor Nikiforov went to his knees. He trailed his mouth down his chest as he did so, put his tongue to the curve of his hips. Hooked his fingers beneath his thighs and pulled him closer and finally took him into his mouth.

This was when Yuuri made his first sound, and it was a soft, lovely sigh which climbed into something greater, a gasp even as he curled his fingers in Viktor Nikiforov’s hair, then a stifled whine. Still no words. Viktor didn't mind. The Yuuri he had known before Barcelona was not nearly as taken with cruel, fast talking as this current incarnation of him, and the quiet reminded him of past years.

Yuuri had been softer then. He was obviously trying hard to be soft now. Viktor wondered if he could just be _Yuuri_ anymore, without effort, or if that too was lost. If so, that was undeniably Viktor’s fault.

“My love,” Viktor whispered against the inner expanse of Yuuri’s thigh, where Yuuri could not hear it, tasting the involuntary bitterness of the words. “I am sorry.”

It was laughably insufficient, but Viktor didn’t ventured to say more. It was enough for now that he had said anything at all.

After he was done, after Yuuri finished, Viktor stayed on his knees. He tipped back his head and watched the moon play pale shadows across Yuuri’s face. Yuuri’s eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell rapidly, and again Viktor kissed his thighs. Yuuri pulled a heavy hand through his hair.

Viktor didn't know quite when he had realized again. Being in love with Yuuri was peculiar in that way; the first time it had happened, Viktor hadn’t noticed for months. It had simply felt _right_ , natural, like _in love_ was the state of being to which Viktor was meant to belong, and Yuuri had finally set him straight in the universe by making him love him. It wasn't a revelation, an epiphany, or a crushing, world-ending occurrence. It just _was_.

The second time, of course, it was different. Viktor supposed he had spent so long hating the mere thought of such vulnerability, on an enormous scale which he could not begin to stomach even when he and Yuuri had begun to sleep together again, that he had simply refused to see it. He had been so afraid.

He was still afraid. But with the end looming so near, perhaps less so.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Will you sleep now?” and the tired smile that crept across Yuuri’s mouth was satisfying.

“I don't want to,” Yuuri murmured, and then he sighed. Viktor stood, dressed him with the same slow ritual as he had originally undressed him, and Yuuri was no more talkative this time than the first. When Viktor looked at his face, the lines of it were gentle. Yuuri swayed, and Viktor steadied him by his hips.

And so Viktor led him to the bed and coaxed him to lie down, and when he had Viktor sat beside him and threaded his fingers through his hair. Yuuri said, finally, “We have an hour.”

“I doubt they'll do anything until they alert the Service,” Viktor whispered. “We have a bit more time than that.”

“Mm.” Yuuri lay on his stomach, and he turned his face to the side so he could blink at him. His gaze was drowsy. Viktor placed another chaste kiss against his shoulder. “I have something to tell you.”

Viktor nodded. He knew--it was the same secret Nishigori Yuko had confided in him in Kyoto. Still, when Yuuri said it, Viktor closed his eyes.

“Yes,” he murmured. “I--me too. Me too, Yura.”

The smile to his voice was not unkind. “Are you afraid?”

Despite himself, Viktor frowned. “Of what? Of saying it?”

A quiet shrug. Yuuri was unperturbed by his mild irritation. He seemed unperturbed by everything, at the moment. “Of anything.”

Viktor laughed.

“Terrified,” he replied. “I’m terrified.”

“Viktor.” Yuuri sat up. His shirt collar slipped against his shoulders, and he cast it off again. Then he coaxed Viktor to him, so his head was tucked beneath his chin and Viktor could hear every movement of his lungs and beat of his heart. Yuuri tapped a finger against the pulse in Viktor’s throat. “You’re allowed to be afraid.”

“I...” He faltered.

“Either way you don't have to say anything, _anata.”_ Yuuri put his lips to his hair. Viktor wondered if he felt on his skin the way Viktor’s own heart leapt in his chest at the word. How he had missed its sincerity, in these past years. “I don't expect that. I just thought--I thought you should know.”

Against his heart, Viktor nodded. He knew. He whispered, “Alright.” Above him, Yuuri dropped into silence again.

When Yuuri at last fell asleep, Viktor thought again to say it. It had been so long since the confession of it hadn't inspired guilt, or fear.

_I love you. I love you._ Each time it set fire to his throat, poisoned his tongue. Was he even sure, really sure, that it was true? And was he sure that this was what Yuuri would want? Reciprocation, after all Viktor had put him through?

_I love you_. God, he hated it. Yuuri would think him pathetic. _I am so sorry that I love you._

Perhaps it was wrong of him, to hate this. But Viktor didn't deserve to say things like this, to be soft with Katsuki Yuuri after he had ruined him so many times over. It simply wasn't fair.

Because what kind of man killed his lover and brought him back to life time and time again with only flighty professions of affection? What kind of man took advantage of devotion to hurt, over and over again? Not a kind one. Not the man Viktor wanted to be any longer.

Eventually, as they were fated to, the whispers died out. Viktor drew soft, tumbling lines of his own imagining against Yuuri’s bare shoulders. He did not speak, but he wrote that which he could not say against his skin, over and over and over until perhaps at last they could convey something which he, with words, could not.

* * *

Yuuri woke to Viktor Nikiforov shaking his shoulder with quiet urgency. Time was a hopeless concept to him here, but he assumed this meant an hour had passed. Immediately, he was alert.

“Give me a gun,” he murmured, and a gun was the first thing Viktor pressed into his hands. The second was Yuuri’s own switchblade, the one he had kept on him at all times in the house on Nevsky. He did not know how Viktor had come into possession of it now, and he did not ask.

“Someone’s here,” Viktor murmured, and Yuuri nodded. “Speaking Japanese.”

So they hadn't waited for FSB approval as Viktor had assured they would. Yuuri was disappointed at this, but largely unsurprised. Everyone wanted to be the one to kill them, and deferring to Russia just because the nation had the largest staked claim on Viktor Nikiforov’s head would be considered laughable, at the least. Insulting, more than likely.

Still only sitting upright in bed, Yuri tilted his head. Listened for intruders.

Then he stood, because he too heard voices speaking Japanese. The woman was calling for him, though she was not using his name. Yuuri tugged on his shirt and went to the door.

“Shining Prince,” sang Okukawa Minako in Japanese, as she tracked purposefully audible steps down the hall. A soft sliding noise accompanied her, like she had placed one hand against the wall and dragged it along the paneling beside her. “Emperor Consort. What else do they call you?”

Yuuri opened the bedroom door. He removed the safety from the handgun.

In the dark, still hallway, Minako raised her head. She said, “Yuuri.”

Yuuri said nothing. He kept the gun level with her eyes.

“Darling,” Minako murmured, and she raised her hands slowly about her head. “I’m here to help. Not to hurt you.”

“And who came with you?” His Japanese was rougher than hers. Minako spoke it quietly, prettily, because she was in control. Yuuri spoke it and his voice quavered, because he was afraid.

“A few men.” Minako smiled. It did not charm him into putting the gun down. “Ten. It was all I could do on such short notice.”

“You brought yakuza into my parents’ house?” Yuuri demanded. Okukawa Minako raised a brow.

“Well,” she murmured. “I’d hardly be the first to have done so, would I?”

“Shut _up.”_ His hands had begun to shake. Yuuri had wanted to do this _alone_ , god damn it. Why would none of them let him do this by himself?

“Yuuri.” Minako let her hands drift to her sides. “My dear. I’m not here to hurt you.”

And strangely, Yuuri believed her. Quietly, he put the safety back on the gun.

“Okay.” He breathed. Viktor Nikiforov waited several paces behind him, in the bedroom, at last allowing Yuuri to handle what only he could. “Then what are you here to do?”

Okukawa Minako tilted her head. Her hands, her fingers, beckoned for him, and Yuuri went to her. Without question. He was so easily heeled, when it came to fucking Okukawa Minako.

When Minako embraced him, Yuuri sighed. She placed her lips against his cheekbone and murmured, “I am here to atone, darling. Do you understand what I mean?”

Stiffly, Yuuri nodded. Minako petted his hair and whispered impossible, soothing things in Japanese only a mother would ever think to say.

* * *

Morning came like this: there was blood.

The first yakuza Minako had stationed outside died quickly, but not quietly. As long as Yuuri had known them, Russians had always entertained a flair for dramatics, and the man’s body was perforated with bullets and dumped on the inside doorstep before it had occurred to the inhabitants of the Katsuki house that dawn had arrived. The skies were black, dark blue, now lightening to grey. Katsuki Yuuri blinked.

“Yuuri.” A hand on his shoulder, shaking him. The voice was Viktor’s. The voice in his mind was Okukawa Minako’s: _Act_.

Yuuri was moving, launching himself down the steps, through rooms, always before Viktor Nikiforov because he was quicker, had always been quicker, and he knew if Viktor got ahead of him he would use his larger body to shield Yuuri from whatever awaited them after the heavy thud of the Okukawa man’s body on the doorstep, and Yuuri would not be the last to die here, would not watch Viktor fall first. He refused to be awarded that final seal of cowardice.

“Yuuri!” Behind him, hissing. “Don't be stupid--”

But Yuuri knew this house, and Yuuri was not stupid. Yuuri was cruel and conscienceless and the blood on his hands would never run clean, even if he lived another fifty years, but Yuuri had _never_ been stupid. He slid behind the first FSB man to slip inside his parents’ house from the north entrance, pressed a palm to his mouth, and drew his knife against his throat.

Much like Hasetsu had never seen yakuza before Katsuki Yuuri, the little ocean town had never seen a proper police siege before. Not once, and even if it had it could never have fathomed something on a scale like this.

Following Yuuri’s example, hoping to spare the house of unnecessary bullet-inflicted damage, Viktor Nikiforov took the next man by the face and broke his jaw against the convex corner of the doorway. Then he hit him again, and shattered bone beneath his eye socket, and the man dropped to the floor. He did not get back up.

Moving again, and Yuuri had Viktor Nikiforov by the arm and he was dragging him along, away from the direct war zone, as bullets began to rend the air, the walls, the ceilings. The Okukawa men had not been the first to fire. Yuuri had given them stern orders not to destroy his parents’ house until after the Russians had. The order of it all was important to him.

Yuuri still had his knife, and he used it now, on FSB men and Japanese agents alike. There were much more of them than ten. They died the same as anyone else did with a blade between the ribs.

And yet it was obvious this first attack was not intended to kill either of them. Viktor Nikiforov was untouched--even pristinely so--evidently as a result of some orders on Moscow’s part. Yuuri decided they must not have changed their minds on wanting him alive, even now.

Yuuri was not unscathed. There was blood soaking his shirt, his and not his, at his side and where a bullet had grazed his shoulder but done no lasting damage. He had seen at least four of Minako’s men fall thus far. Shy of a dozen FSB men lay dead in the hall when the chaos stopped.

And it stopped, quite simply, because the men did. The ubiquitous presence of Service men--living ones, at the least--had faltered, ceased, and Yuuri knew better than to be deceived by this. This was a siege, and they still had hours to go.

“He’s fucking with us,” Viktor panted, and Yuuri did not ask who _he_ was. He knew.

“Where’s Minako?” he hissed, shoulderblades pressed to Viktor Nikiforov’s back. The latter was shaking, or panicking, or both. Yuuri didn't have the time nor correct mindset to get Viktor’s nerves under control. “Viktor. Where’s Minako?”

Footsteps, above their head. Okukawa Minako walked like a dancer, like a predator, like Yuuri, and these footsteps were not like Yuuri’s. They were heavy and crude, and then they stopped. Something shortly followed the silence: the thud of a body.

“You’re bleeding,” Viktor remarked quietly, and Yuuri looked at him and then above their heads. At the ceiling.

“Is she up the stairs?”

“No.” Viktor looked up with him. “She followed me.”

Upstairs, the footsteps began again. Yuuri felt his mouth twist.

“I’m going out.”

“You will not,” Viktor said, grabbing at his sleeve. “They’ll kill you.”

“They're waiting for someone.” Yuuri looked up again, once, at the ceiling. “I’ll give them someone else to move it along.”

“Yura. Please.” In his panic, he no longer spoke English. The word for _please_ in Russian was soft. Quiet vowels and sibilant consonants. _Pozhaluysta_.

Yuuri said, “Don’t touch me.” Like old times, like recent times. Viktor let his hand fall away from his wrist.

“Yuuri,” he whispered, and it was lovely and pathetic and all manner of things which would make Yuuri weep if he gave himself the time to consider them. _Final hours._ “Love, please. I can’t--”

Katsuki Yuuri looked him in the face. He said, “Plisetsky doesn't want to be your heir. Don’t make him.”

“No.” Viktor’s panic was wild. He spoke as if he would have a chance to give such concessions, as if he was going to live. Yuuri himself wanted so badly to convince him of it. Viktor had never believed in his own mortality, and to see the realization of it in his gaze now was too much. “No, of course not. I won't.”

“Let Mila make her mistakes in Italy.” Yuuri closed his eyes, and he swayed. “It will make her smarter, and make her value her place more. She won't stop until she’s discovered for herself anyway.”

“I’ve been thinking about--” Viktor paused. “About letting Mila go.”

“Don’t.” Yuuri knew what Viktor meant by _let go_. Mila was too headstrong, too violent, too unpredictable for Viktor Nikiforov. He tended to let go of those he couldn't control. “She’s valuable to you. You’re worse off without her.” Yuuri smiled. “You just have to make her love you again, Viktor. That’s all.”

“Please--”

“Chris deserves more. He’s given up a lot for you. It wouldn't hurt to thank him.”

“Yuuri.” Here, Yuuri nearly forfeited his resolve. His knees buckled beneath him, and Viktor Nikiforov caught him firmly by the shoulders. _“Anata.”_

_Anata_ , in this house. Yuuri laughed, a clear sound which reverberated to his bones. He said, “That’s for married couples,” and Viktor said, “I know that.”

Quiet. Someone was moving on the stairs. “Do you really want to die in Japan?”

“Anywhere,” Viktor whispered. “Anywhere, as long as it’s not alone.”

Katsuki Yuuri nodded.

* * *

It was dawn when Yuri Plisetsky woke again. He could not remember where he was.

When he tried to get out of bed, he fell. Something about his legs refused to work correctly, and his mind was too fuzzy to pinpoint exactly why. When he fell, the world around him went temporarily black, and then rushed back in a dizzying flash of color and movement. Yuri felt for several moments that he might throw up, and pressed a hand to his mouth so he did not. He could not feel his other hand, and yet somehow this did not bother him.

He got up. Wound an arm around the leg of the bed, used it to pull himself into a sitting position and then orient himself, then drag the three of his limbs which retained feeling into a crouch. Breathing was difficult too, because everything was difficult, and Yuri had to close his eyes for several moments so he could focus on that. In and out, the cavity in his chest filling and emptying, and suddenly he was so _tired--_

He would not pass out. Yuri was better than that. Besides, he had to find Viktor and yell at him. That was the purpose of all this, he decided.

He couldn't remember about what he was going to yell, but the goal itself was motivation enough.

Yuri used the wall to guide himself across the room, to hold himself upright when he legs trembled. His head hurt, and his mouth was dry. Every single one of his thoughts took ages to formulate, twice as long to decipher into any sort of language which made sense. He wondered if this was what any of the drugs Viktor and Yuuri liked so much felt like, and decided if so that he hated them. The drugs--not Viktor or Yuuri.

He didn't think he hated Viktor or Yuuri, but he couldn't remember that either. He had set his heart on yelling at Viktor, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. Yuri simply liked to yell.

Stunningly, he made his way into the hall. From there, he braced a shoulder against the wall and made his way toward the direction of voices. They were speaking a language he could not understand, but Yuri doubted he could understand plain Russian if it were spoken to him in this moment, so perhaps that in itself didn't mean anything either.

Everything hurt. His mouth was dry. His head was spinning. Something--a sharp beginning-of-numbness discomfort in his shoulder, his fingers, the entire left half of his body--began to needle at him incessantly.

When he arrived in the room with the voices, his vision had begun to blur again. Yuri blinked and said, “Where is Viktor?”

He thought he might have spoken Russian (which, now that he was closer and perhaps a bit more coherent, he determined was decidedly not the language of the voices) and he frowned. Attempted to correct his mistake.

“I--” he began laboriously, and then he was interrupted.

“Why are you out of bed?” This was English, but Yuri’s brain was struggling so valiantly to invent its own sentences in English at the moment that somehow the translation came through. _“How_ are you out of bed?”

Yuri’s frown deepened. It was a stupid question. “I walked,” he mumbled, and then something cool was against his temples which he discovered belatedly was the doorframe. He had leaned entirely against it, like a staggering drunk.

He did not like this comparison, and did his best to forget it.

“Head hurts,” he muttered, and then he flinched when someone laid a hand on him. His temple struck the doorframe softly, and pain exploded in his head. _“Fuck.”_

(That, at least, he believed he said in Russian.)

“It shouldn’t,” said the voice, a delicately accented female one, and Yuri suddenly remembered Katsuki’s friend. The one with the cool hands, who had not gotten angry with him when Yuri had vomited on what were very likely her bedsheets. She had held his head and given him something to swallow with water, and Yuri had gone to sleep. “You're on so much fentanyl you shouldn’t even be conscious.”

“Oh.” Maybe he should go to sleep then.

Yuri felt those hands again, steadying him. Had he started to fall? He couldn't remember. He said, “Sorry,” just to be safe.

“It’s fine, baby.” Yuri remembered that too. She called everyone baby. He couldn't find the energy in himself to be righteously offended by it. “Do you need anything?”

Finally, his vision focused. Yuri saw he was in a kitchen, and seated behind Katsuki’s friend were two other people. Older, Japanese. He did not recognize them.

“Where is Viktor?” Yuri repeated now. “I...I need…”

“Shh, baby.” She was leading him somewhere. Away from the older couple in the kitchen, and Yuri didn't like this. He wanted to ask them questions. “He’s not here.”

“Why not?” Yuri planted his feet, and he made her stop. “Where...where is he?”

“He’s somewhere else, kiddo. It’s okay.” Evidently he had not made her stop, because the woman was now pulling something--new sheets, not the vomit-covered ones of previous bouts of consciousness--to his chest. Yuri couldn't even recall getting into bed. “You’re not doing well right now. You have a fever, and we’re leaving soon, so I need you to get some rest, okay? Say okay.”

“Okay,” Yuri mumbled obediently. “Will Viktor come with? I have to...I’ve got to…”

“I can’t understand you, kiddo.” The woman pressed her cool hand to his forehead. Yuri hadn't realized until this how hotly his face burned. “I can't speak Russian.”

Yuri knew someone who could speak Russian. He said, making a particular last effort to speak English, “Where is Yuuri? He can help.”

Something in the woman’s voice changed. Her breathing hitched, and Yuri frowned. His eyes were closed. “Yuuri’s not here either, baby. He’s--he’s taking care of some other business.”

“Oh.” He did not like this response. It sounded like a lie. He was too tired to argue it. “When he gets back, can you tell him--tell’m that I wanna talk. T’him.”

“Of course, baby.” The woman, Yuuri’s friend with the same tattoo on her inner arm that Yuuri had, kept her hand on his forehead until he fell asleep. Yuri never got to ask her about where they were going.

* * *

While Yuuri had occupied himself with Japanese police, Nikiforov with Russian assassins, Okukawa Minako had busied herself with other things.

She stood now, on the second floor of Katsuki Yuuri’s childhood home, and she contemplated the end of a life. There was blood beneath her nails--she had not left the two of them to fend off the first wave of a siege by themselves, of course, and she had killed her share with Fujiwara as they took the house from the southern entrance. But then Fujiwara had been killed, and Minako was older now, and she couldn't hold the defenses herself. And really, that had never been her intention anyway.

When the first wave had ceased (caution heeded by those outside the house, likely because they were still operating under orders to take Nikiforov alive and woe was the man who accidentally shot him rather than Katsuki), Minako had leaned against the wall. The pads of her hands were slick with blood. She had at some point been raked across the face with fingernails, and four deep gouges in her cheek marred her already stern face. They were by no means her first scars, but they aged her. She looked worn, ragged, even with bright blood flowing freely from her face.

At her feet was Fujiwara. He was dead. Minako considered this fact rationally and decided it was unfortunate. The irrational part of her was the part that threatened tears.

But she stifled the emotion. Fujiwara had hardly been two steps away from expendable. He was young, and relatively unimportant. This was about protecting Yuuri, and all the Okukawas had known that when they had volunteered to accompany Minako to Hasetsu. (That was, in part, why there had been so few of them. Loyalty didn't mean as much anymore as it had during Yuuri’s time in Tokyo.)

Minako had met the man with the missing fingers chainsmoking on the south edge of the onsen. She had extricated knowledge of his location from a young Russian--perhaps twenty-four, if she had to assign an age to the youth in his face--before she had slashed his carotid. The man had drawn a gun, fumbled with it, and Minako had laughed.

“Don’t bother,” she had reproached lowly, in English. “I’ll be dead by noon, Grigori.” But to be safe, she drew her own handgun. She plucked the cigarette from Grigori Beskudnikov’s mouth and ground it beneath her heel. Minako disliked smoking--Yuko had taken up the habit in youth for this particular reason.

“What do you want?” He spoke Japanese. How nice. Accommodating. Minako dipped her head.

“I want you to make me a deal,” she said. Grigori Beskudnikov looked at her for a moment.

“I don't negotiate with murderers,” he said self-righteously. Minako laughed, and made no effort to minimize her volume. She was not afraid of what they could do to her here, only of what they threatened to do inside the house.

“And I don't tolerate liars.” She gestured with a tilt of her chin at his mangled hand. “What happened there?”

Grigori Beskudnikov’s hand curled, his remaining fingers fluttering to conceal the damage. Like he was embarrassed of it. “Nikiforov.”

“Humiliating.” Minako hummed. “Bet you want to kill him.”

Narrowed eyes. “What does it matter to you?”

Okukawa Minako smiled. She leaned forward. “There is no love between me and Viktor Nikiforov. I want him just as dead as you do.”

“And yet we’re not allies.” His eyes lingered on his hand. “Katsuki is dying today too.”

“Why?” Minako tilted her head. “Are you personally invested in his death as well, Grigori?”

“I don't like him.”

“Mm.” She smiled. “I see. Nikiforov destroys your hand, permanently brands and embarrasses you, makes you grovel to your superiors in order to keep your position after fucking yourself over so badly in letting him escape Russia.” She tapped out a soft rhythm on her thigh. “But you don't _like_ Katsuki.”

A scowl. “Why are you here? I have no quarrel with the rest of the Okukawas.”

“Not yet,” Minako agreed, and then she stood. She said, “Come into the house, Grigori, and we can discuss why I am here.”

* * *

Viktor Nikiforov put his fist through the plaster.

He did so against Yuuri’s request, and at the sound the latter blinked.

“You're going to break your knuckles,” he remarked quietly. Viktor simply bared his teeth.

“Don't act like this is okay--” he snarled in Russian, and Yuuri leaned against the wall. He had bound the bloodier of his minor wounds with linen from the onsen’s bedsheets. Still, the pain was perhaps getting to him, just a bit. He smiled slightly, as if it was funny.

“Vitenka,” he said, and that quieted him. It always did. “It’s okay.”

Something exploded against the outer wall. A spray of gunfire. Yuuri dropped to the floor, and then checked that Viktor had done the same. The latter had retained enough self-preservation to at least do that much.

“He’s _fucking_ with us,” Viktor snapped, because he was losing it. He had been pacing the room like a caged animal for the entire silent hour. Yuuri had slowly bled through each of his bandages as he did so, and changed them out alone while kneeling on the floor.

“Of course,” Yuuri said rationally. “He’s gloating. You would do the same.”

“I would not be such a coward about it,” Viktor retorted, his teeth snapping together audibly. He got up, sat back on his heels, and his expression became aggrieved. _“Yuuri.”_

There was blood in the corners of Yuuri’s mouth; he must have bitten his tongue while going to the floor. He wiped the scarlet from his lips with the back of his hand.

The papers--and the Plisetsky inner circle, at their unkindest--had always referred to Yuuri as the attack dog of the pair. Looking at the new light in Viktor’s gaze, it was difficult for Yuuri to see why. Determination was a scary thing on the face of the old Devil of Saint Petersburg.

He stood. Yuuri had half a mind to snap get down before accepting that it would make no difference. Viktor Nikiforov, knowing he was bound to die here one hour or another, no longer had any fear of consequence.

“I’m going to drag him up here myself.”

Yuuri raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

“Don’t mock--”

“Nikiforov.” The voice was not Yuuri’s. The voice was Minako’s. She leaned against the doorframe quietly. “Sit down.”

“I don't take orders from you,” Viktor snapped, whirling on her. “And where had you _been?”_

“Fixing things.” Minako’s gaze wandered to Yuuri. “I said sit down.”

Viktor Nikiforov sat down. Minako tipped her chin at Katsuki Yuuri, particularly at the blood soaking his torso. “Anything serious?”

Yuuri bowed. He murmured, “No.”

“Serious enough,” bit back Viktor Nikiforov, and Yuuri flashed him a deadly look. This was not the time to bemoan his injuries. Not in front of Minako.

“The next time they come, they will kill you,” Minako said, graciously ignoring the tension. “Fifteen minutes. Are you sure you won’t leave?”

“Can’t leave now anyway,” Yuuri reminded her softly, because it was true. The onsen was surrounded. “How do you know?”

“Because I do,” Minako said. Yuuri studied her expression and found no tells, no tics, that would reveal an explanation. He nodded.

“Then we wait,” he resolved. The icy stare Viktor imparted to him was terrible.

“That's the grand end to it?” he said flatly. “That’s how Katsuki Yuuri dies?”

“That's how Viktor Nikiforov dies as well,” Minako reminded him. Her tone was cold. “You had your opportunity to leave.”

“Fuck you.”

“Watch your mouth.”

Somehow, Viktor did not yield beneath her rage. His sudden calm looked unshakable.

“Yuuri,” he said. “I need to speak with you.”

“Make it fast,” Minako said, and Yuuri nodded curtly. He stood. He allowed Viktor Nikiforov to lead him from the room.

“I don't trust her.”

“Viktor.” Before, perhaps, Yuuri would have tolerated this. He was no stranger to the tension between Okukawa Minako and Viktor Nikiforov. But Yuuri was tired. He had no strength left for a debate like this. “Please.”

“No,” Viktor said, taking him by the shoulders. Yuuri did not flinch, though the pressure of his fingers caused him pain. “Listen, Yura. I don't _trust her.”_

Yuuri looked at him. Viktor’s expression was panicked, and Yuuri did not know how to smooth the lines between his brows without doing so physically with his fingers. He did not touch him, and thus the lines remained.

“I don't think it matters, Vitya,” Yuuri said softly, “whether you trust her or not. There is no changing the outcome.”

“Why not?” Viktor shook him desperately by the shoulders. Now Yuuri flinched, hissed wordlessly at the pain. “Why can’t we change it?”

“I’ve been shot, Viktor.” His teeth clipped against each other fiercely. “And I’ve spent a very long time running from this. I’m home now. And I’m tired.”

“Is this all you wanted?”

“I wanted closure.” Yuuri blinked. Set his jaw. “I got it.”

“I promised--”

“And that's not my problem,” Yuuri snapped. Then he sighed. “Please, Viktor. Just let me have this.”

Viktor Nikiforov did not nod. He stepped away from Yuuri, and he said, “Okay.” Then he said, “I need to speak with Minako.”

“No, you don't.” Yuuri knew what he intended. He would not be the reason for martyrdom. Softly, he folded his hand against Viktor’s cheek. “Now you’ll always be pretty.”

He hadn't seen Viktor _weep_ , not like this, in years. He took Yuuri’s wrist in his hand and pressed his fingers harder against his face. Like he was afraid of losing him, if he could not physically hold onto him. Like he would never let him go.

Yuuri let him hold his wrist, let him weep silently until he was done, and then he took his fingers back. Viktor whispered, “Closure,” and Yuuri nodded. “Can you give me that?”

“Selfish,” Yuuri murmured. But he did not deny him it. “What do you want?”

“I--I didn't mean what I said before. About being sorry for the past six years.” Viktor shook with the remainder of the emotion which had first made him cry. “That was--stupid on my part. The first three years--those were good. I’m not sorry for them, Yura.”

Slowly, Yuuri nodded. He said, “Okay.” Then he reached upward and brushed away what could still be recognized as tears from his cheeks. “Is that all?”

Viktor Nikiforov blinked. After a moment, in which it looked like he was struggling to put to words something more, he said, “Yes. That’s all.”

“Alright,” Yuuri said softly. He smiled. “Thank you, Viktor.”

“Yes.” He nodded. Yuuri wondered if he was entirely in his right mind anymore, and then decided that it didn't quite matter. When Minako appeared in the doorway, Yuuri did not withdraw his hands from Viktor’s face. The latter was leaning too earnestly into his touch for Yuuri to justify the cruelty in depriving him of it.

In Japanese, Minako said, “I can get him out. For you,” and Yuuri responded lowly, because he had known this already, and he was so _tired:_ “Please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter plus an epilogue! im going to be sad to see this one go, honestly. it's been so fun.
> 
> for fun's sake, if anyone's wondering about the ending and wants a hint: the title of the next chapter, half-written as it is, is Siegfried.
> 
> as always, thank you for comments and kudos, and thanks for sticking with me for so long! it's been fun. xx


	21. Siegfried

When Grigori Beskudnikov finally made his appearance in the Katsuki house, the sun had risen high. It was late morning. Yuuri sat on the floor, as close as he dared to a yet unbroken window, and felt the warm sunlight play over the backs of his hands.

Viktor Nikiforov leaned against the doorframe, body curved in a way that was almost foreign to Yuuri because it was not proud, and toyed with Yuuri’s switchblade. Yuuri had given it to him, on the grounds of self-defense. Really, he rather hoped it was something for Viktor to remember him by.

When the gunfire came again, Yuuri did not move. Viktor Nikiforov looked up languidly, then back down to the knife. “South entrance,” he said, and Yuuri nodded.

There would be too many for the three of them to entertain delusions of victory. Of course, Minako had made Yuuri her promises, but they did not extend to matters of his own life. He would die on his feet, and that was all.

Katsuki Yuuri got up.

Okukawa Minako was upstairs. The footsteps in the hall were not hers, and yet there were only enough for one person. Yuuri tilted his head to side.

In the doorway opposite to the one in which Viktor Nikiforov leaned, Grigori Beskudnikov raised his hands to his head and said, “Katsuki Yuuri.” He was alone. One of his hands, now positioned cautiously above his head, was wrapped in bloodied bandages. His smile was strangely satisfied for an outnumbered man, which could only mean that he was in fact not outnumbered at all. “Your hometown is lovely.”

“I’m honored you think so,” Yuuri replied, but he did not move closer. Viktor Nikiforov had gone quite still against the doorframe, and he said nothing. Yuuri inferred this meant he had also reached the conclusion that Beskudnikov was not alone, and any venture against him would result in a prompt bullet in the skull. “Have you come to negotiate?”

“Something to that effect.” Beskudnikov lifted his chin and met Viktor Nikiforov’s still gaze. “So quiet. Have you finally heeled your dog, Katsuki?”

Viktor closed the switchblade. He smiled. Said nothing.

Yuuri said, “This vendetta of yours has certainly taken you a ways away from home, Grigori. I hope it's worth it, in the end.”

“It's no vendetta,” Beskudnikov replied calmly. “I’m simply doing my job.”

“No Service orders would have you walk directly into this house to exchange words with either of us. At least call it what it is, and admit that this is a personal matter.”

“I suppose it is slightly personal.” Beskudnikov shrugged. “I take a bit of offense to being physically maimed in my own home.”

Yuuri dipped his head. Viktor remained as he was. “Understandable.”

“Regardless,” Beskudnikov continued. “Russia still wants you both dead.”

“Nor I can't fault it that,” Yuuri murmured. “We did quite a bit of damage in six years.”

“It’s more the appearance of the thing,” Beskudnikov said, and he took several steps and leaned against Yuuri’s parents’ counter. “These aren't the nineties. I don't presume to know intimately Japan’s stance on organized crime, but in Russia we take the matter very seriously.”

“When it benefits you,” Yuuri amended. “When the bribes are no longer big enough.”

Grigori Beskudnikov dipped his head in acknowledgement of this fact. “Precisely.”

Viktor Nikiforov said helpfully, “You really shouldn't keep third degree burns bandaged for so long, Grigori.” When the man snarled, Viktor flashed him a charming smile which lasted only a fraction of a moment. Then he was still again.

“You came to negotiate,” Yuuri reminded him. Grigori Beskudnikov blinked.

“I came to make you an offer.”

Yuuri did not ask _why?_ He merely dipped his head.

“Clearly, you are willing to sacrifice a great deal for your family, Katsuki Yuuri. Do you believe you can protect them from the Service after you're dead?”

Stiffly, Yuuri said, “No, but I do believe that the Service had no legal jurisdiction over innocent Japanese citizens, and that any Russian meddling with my family will cause an international legal scandal.”

“You know there are other ways to get what we want, Katsuki Yuuri.”

Not where they were headed. Busan was far away, in a third-party state too distant for even the FSB’s scope. Still, Yuuri kept his expression cool.

This was why he had stayed. Grigori Beskudnikov was spiteful, and he harbored personal grudges against the Katsuki-Nikiforov clan. Yuuri’s assassination, Viktor’s disappearance might pacify the FSB, but it would not stop the man who stood before them now. Yuuri had stayed to kill him.

“You came to negotiate.”

“I came to tell you that I will send half of my own agents and the entire Japanese force back to Tokyo with dead-end leads on the location of the Katsuki family, as a favor to you. Does that sound agreeable?”

He knew that suspicion had flared in his gaze, and that Beskudnikov had noticed. “For what?” Yuuri asked flatly.

“Excuse me?” His tone was charming. Yuuri hated him more than ever now, more even than he had at the gala in Viktor’s home. How dare they continue this game? What had the rest of the Katsukis ever done, except lead quiet lives and attempt to scrub their son’s poison from their name?

“In exchange for what?” Yuuri felt his lip curl. From the doorway, Viktor watched him quietly. “What do you want in return?”

Beskudnikov smiled. “Cooperation. That’s all.”

“We’re cooperating right now.” Viktor Nikiforov spoke now. Yuuri was shaking too finely to trust the cadence of his own voice. “I haven't killed you yet, Grisha. I would say that's generous, in terms of cooperation.”

“I have corpses to deliver.” Grigori Beskudnikov did not react to the familiarity of the diminutive, though it must have killed him. “One, actually. Russia wants you alive.” He looked to Viktor Nikiforov and sneered.

“And yet something tells me you have no intentions on letting me return alive,” Viktor murmured. His voice was low--verging on soft. Katsuki Yuuri ground his teeth to the root and made himself stop shaking.

“I do hope you put up a fight,” Beskudnikov agreed pleasantly.

Yuuri said, “Why negotiate?” At Grigori Beskudnikov’s gently tilted head, he pushed on: “Why not just kill us and be done with it? Why make me an offer?”

“I want you to stop killing my men.” Grigori Beskudnikov smiled, and it was unkind. “You’re making this a much grander scene than it requires.”

“You want us to go quietly,” Viktor Nikiforov said, and he laughed. _“Damnatio memoriae.”_

_“Damnatio memoriae,”_ echoed Beskudnikov, and Yuuri was not quite as familiar with Latin but he recognized the term. He felt as if his side had begun to bleed with fresh vigor.

“Grisha,” Viktor Nikiforov said gently, and Yuuri looked to him with certain urgency. He sounded distinctly as he always had right before he did something Yuuri did not like. Katsuki Yuuri felt his jaw tighten, and before his mind did, his body _knew_. “I’ll kill every goddamn person on this property before I go quietly to an execution for you.”

Yuuri was on his hands and knees before he thought consciously that standing in plain sight was not such a fantastic place to be anymore, but his unconscious reaction had been a good one. The empty space above him was shredded with bullets.

He realized now what had triggered the chaos. Viktor Nikiforov had moved, as only he moved, as only Okukawa assassins moved (and truthfully, it was grace he had learned from Yuuri, in training gyms and ballrooms and in Viktor Nikiforov’s bed), and he had taken Grigori Beskudnikov by the back of the neck and slammed him face first into the sink. Similarly to what Yuuri had also done, months ago. The repeat of the abuse was satisfying, even if Yuuri was on his knees to see it.

The click of a handgun’s safety, and Viktor Nikiforov’s voice: “Don’t.”

A second click, and then there was the cool metal of a gun’s barrel against the base of Katsuki Yuuri’s skull: “Stand.”

Yuuri stood, because he had no choice in the matter. When he made eye contact with Viktor Nikiforov, now on the opposite side of the room, Viktor’s gaze was cold.

“That doesn’t matter to me,” he said, and he indeed looked like Yuuri’s death was of no concern to him. He had his hand over Grigori Beskudnikov’s mouth, his gun shoved into his side, and the man’s eyes widened silently. Viktor Nikiforov pulled the trigger.

Behind Yuuri, the man who had jammed a gun to his head and ordered him to stand gave a quiet gasp. In the next moment, the weight of his body against Yuuri’s was gone and someone was pressing the handgun into Yuuri’s hands. His fingers had begun to shake again.

And then Okukawa Minako was standing on his parents’ low dining room table, gesturing casually at Grigori Beskudnikov with a blood-slick fighting knife as Viktor Nikiforov gave him a shove and he fell against the counter, choking on his own blood. Viktor had shot him through the ribs, and the bullet had not only punctured tissue but shattered on contact and quite irreparably shredded a lung. Okukawa Minako said, “Is that a quarrel enough, Grigori?”

“Minako--” Yuuri began, and then he shot the next FSB agent to appear in the doorway and point a weapon at her. Then the next. Okukawa Minako did not step down from the table; instead her voice was hard when she said without turning to him, “Do you always waste opportunities like these, Katsuki Yuuri?”

So that was the plan. Yuuri felt a flicker of grief, that this was going to end with the death of the entire Okukawa clan. That Minako too planned to die for Viktor Nikiforov, for Yuuri’s sake.

Then he too was moving, and Viktor’s hands were slippery with red-brown blood when Yuuri grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward. Snapped, “Give me my knife,” and Viktor did. Yuuri wasted precious time by slashing the blade against the fluttering main artery in Grigori Beskudnikov’s neck, but the way he gasped with his dying breath was too damningly satisfying to force Yuuri to care.

“Yuuri,” Okukawa Minako sang, and she was off the table now and in the thick of the fight. Her hair was loose about her shoulders--it was impractical, dangerous, and made her look deceptively young. An opponent made as if to grab it, and Minako laughed and cracked him across the face with her bare hand. This close, they would not risk using their guns, lest she take them from them. Neither Japanese police nor Russian FSB agents were a match for an Okukawa in a knife fight. “Darling. Don’t waste it.”

“Go,” Yuuri snapped, shoving Viktor between his shoulders. He smeared blood against the white of his shirt. Yuuri heard a soft gasp from behind him as he pushed Viktor Nikiforov from the room, and it gave him pause. He turned to glimpse Okukawa Minako--hair still loose and wild, face still smooth and eternally unchanged--press a hand to her stomach where someone had just twisted a very sharp knife. She did not look surprised by the pain, nor particularly off-put by the development. There was new fire to her eyes.

For the first time in several years, Yuuri felt a pang of something less than love, but more than obligation, for the woman who had been Okukawa Minako.

“Yuuri,” murmured someone new, someone strange. The urgent, firm grip on his shoulder made him start. “We have to go.”

Dying was duty, like anything else. Okukawas died artfully well. When Katsuki Yuuri saw Minako for the last time, she was fighting still. Palms slick with red, expression terrible with mounting realization of the end, and yet it was a fight all the same.

For his part, Katsuki Yuuri, heir to the Okukawa throne, turned his face away and fled.

* * *

They were nearly out of the house when Viktor got himself shot.

It was a stupid thing. Yuuri had recovered, snapped back to his body eerily quickly after witnessing his mentor take a soldier’s combat knife to the stomach. He had taken the lead, because it was his house and he knew it best, leading Viktor fiercely by a tight grip on the wrist. Then Viktor had faltered, because someone had said his name.

His full name, patronymic and all, and the shock of it had made Viktor stop. Yuuri had kept going, driving on relentlessly, and his grip on what was now stone-still Viktor Nikiforov made him stumble. This, Viktor decided when he rehashed the moment again and again in his mind, was what saved Katsuki Yuuri.

Viktor Nikiforov took the bullet in his side. He was not wearing Kevlar, and he knew from all those anatomy lessons Lilia had forced him to endure as a child, as well as an intimate familiarity with killing people, that the intestines were a very bad place to be shot. He remarked upon this with a quiet, yet succinct, “Oh.”

At least it was not the stomach. The stomach, when it burst, hurt.

“Oh,” said Viktor Nikiforov, again, and there was a sound--another gunshot, perhaps--and Yuuri was yanking him forward, and he was hissing, “You _idiot_ , why did you stop, where did it hit you, no, no, don't show me just tell me, for fuck’s sake--”

“Side,” Viktor managed to mumble, and he made the mistake of peeling his fingers from just above his hip to demonstrate. Yuuri’s expression was furious, and Viktor registered vaguely this was because he was afraid.

“Put your fucking hand back. Staunch the bleeding.” He was still pulling him by his left forearm, though it seemed he had become rougher with it now. “We’re going to make it as far as we can before I have to carry you, understand?”

“You don't have to--”

“Don't talk.” His hand had begun to shake so terribly Viktor could feel the tremors running up his own arm. His voice was low. “I need you to listen to me when I give you directions. Tell me when you start to lose feeling in your fingers.”

“Okay,” Viktor panted. His legs--though not his fingers--were quickly becoming numb beneath him. Pride and a damning desire to be useful kept him from telling Yuuri so. Instead, Viktor said, “Yuuri.”

“Is it important?”

Viktor considered this. He had begun already to feel physically sick to his stomach, and wondered if he vomited now, whether there would be blood among the bile. “No.”

“Then save it.”

“Okay,” Viktor Nikiforov whispered. He allowed Yuuri to drag him through doorways, press him flat against walls, and Viktor nearly did not realize the fading sensation in his legs. When Yuuri opened the door, the world was eerily quiet. Viktor has forgotten it was not night. He hadn't known that it had begun to rain.

“Why--” he began weakly, and Yuuri said, “Minako made them a deal.”

Save for the rain, the world outside the Katsuki house was silent. It nearly looked kind. Still, Yuuri stepped out first, and when he did so his expression was fateful.

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened except Viktor Nikiforov, who had been gripping the doorjamb for dear life since Yuuri had unwound himself from him, felt his legs go out from beneath him. He thought, just briefly, that he might have blacked out.

When he regained his senses, Yuuri was cursing at him in a language Viktor did not understand. He could not fathom what language it was, except that it was pretty and that it suited him. Yuuri and pretty things complemented each other nicely.

He had Viktor’s left arm pulled about his shoulders, his right hand gripping Viktor’s side a distance above the bleeding entry wound tightly. He said in Russian, “It’s not that much farther.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor mumbled. “M’sorry.”

“About getting shot?” Yuuri’s voice was thick with something. Viktor couldn’t say what. His right hand was too tight on Viktor’s side. “You should be. Idiot.”

“Yuuri,” he began softly, and his face was wet. Why was his face wet? Viktor Nikiforov puzzled over this for too long and forgot what he had meant to say. Settled for: “Hurts.”

“I know it does, love. Get in the car. Christ, are you crying?”

“No.” Or maybe he was. Perhaps that was what the wetness on his face had been. “I don't know.”

“Don't go to sleep.”

“Don't want to die,” Viktor muttered. Katsuki Yuuri made a noise as if this was obvious.

“Exactly. Give me your phone.”

Viktor gave him his phone. Viktor did not go to sleep. He did everything Yuuri ordered him to, because Yuuri was smart and Yuuri knew what to do and Yuuri would keep him alive. Viktor knew that, even if he knew nothing else.

On his phone, Yuuri had begun to talk in that musical unidentified language Viktor loved to hear him speak. He tossed Viktor’s phone into his own lap and used only one hand to drive; the other he extended over the shift and wound fiercely with the fingers of Viktor’s left hand. In Russian, he said, “Focus on this. Nothing else. Do you feel like you are going to pass out?”

Yuuri’s grip was strong. Viktor’s hand hurt. He shook his head and said nothing, and Yuuri did not ask him again. Viktor was glad, because his brain had gone even fuzzier and he worried that any verbal communication would leave his mouth horribly incomprehensible.

For his part, Yuuri continued to snarl directions into his phone, presumably now on speaker since Viktor could occasionally discern a low female voice weaving between Yuuri’s words, but Viktor was not listening. He traced quiet circles with his thumb against the soft part between Yuuri’s fingers and concentrated on memorizing the scarring on his knuckles rather than the hot, dizzying pain in his torso.

He was going to die.

One didn't take a bullet to the gut and make it. Not at that angle, not with this window of time between the injury and receiving potential medical help. That’s why they had left Minako to die in Hasetsu; her wounds were too dire, and there was no point in risking their lives further to collect what would surely be her corpse. Practicality won over sentimentality, always, and Viktor was practical enough to acknowledge the odds here.

He was so _tired_. Was this what dying was? Viktor had never gotten as close as Yuuri had, so he couldn't judge for himself. He thought to ask for a second opinion, and then found the effort too taxing. He stopped tracing circles on Yuuri’s hand.

“Hey.” Yuuri shook off his grip--not that it was difficult, exhausted as Viktor was--and took firmly in his fingers Viktor’s jaw. Turned his face to him, and it was in this moment that Viktor realized how blurry his surroundings had become. He was looking at Yuuri, surely, and yet he could hardly discern him from the rest of the soft watercolors of the world. “Look at me. Talk.”

“M’tired.”

“I’m taking you to someone who can help, okay? I need you to stay awake until then. Do you understand? Say you understand.”

Viktor Nikiforov closed his eyes. “Understand.”

“Look at me.” Yuuri’s voice was suddenly cold. His grip on Viktor’s face seemed strong enough to shatter his jaw. “Look at me. You’re not going to die.”

Someone laughed softly. Viktor thought perhaps it was himself.

“Wouldn’t mind,” he mumbled, because he wouldn't. Being alive _hurt_. Viktor was tired of it. “You're hurting me, Yura.”

“Good.” Yuuri released his jaw, relocated his grip to Viktor’s forearm. He cast his gaze to the road. “Concentrate on this pain, instead of the other one. And keep talking.”

“Mm.”

“Words, Viktor.” Briefly, Yuuri’s tone softened. “It won't be much longer.”

“M’sorry,” Viktor whispered. “For everything.”

“I know that.”

Viktor Nikiforov laughed. He thought for some time that he lapsed into silence, or perhaps quiet delirious nonsense, and then Yuuri’s grip on his arm was gone. He hardly noticed, stupidly hazy as he was, nor did he acknowledge when Yuuri yanked open the passenger door and took Viktor Nikiforov beneath his shoulder blades and his thighs, then lifted him from the car. He did acknowledge when Yuuri snarled, “Stay awake,” against his temple, with a silent and exhausted smile against Katsuki Yuuri’s shoulder.

Then there was quiet again for a while, and Viktor thought softly that if he died now perhaps it would not be so bad. The seaside air was cool on his skin, even though Viktor was sweating, and if Yuuri would just kiss him, Viktor would be content. Dying wasn’t so bad, if it meant he would stop hurting.

He thought to voice these considerations. But when he mumbled, “Kiss me,” into Yuuri’s shoulder, Yuuri did not oblige him. Perhaps he had not heard. Perhaps Viktor had become completely incoherent.

Yuuri set him down. Wherever it was, it was cold--not pleasantly cool, like before, but icy enough it chilled Viktor to the bone and he began to shiver violently. Someone whispered incomprehensible words above him, and a hand carded soothingly through his hair. Viktor Nikiforov’s teeth began to chatter.

“Yuuri,” he said, even these few syllables difficult to manage when his mind and body were not his own. He pulled too frantically at the vowels, stretching his name into something much more Russian than it was. His fingers twitched, though he had no energy to move them consciously. He wanted someone to hold his hand.

And then there was _pain_ , worse than before, worse than when he had first been shot, and somewhere Yuuri was speaking Russian to him but Viktor could not for the life of him tell what he was saying. He wanted death, prayed for it fervently even though he had never been truly religious in his lifetime, and there was the sudden taste of metal in the back of his throat. Someone was holding his head down, shoving something between his teeth, they were killing him on _purpose--_

And then, at last, Viktor Nikiforov passed out.

* * *

 

Yuko’s doctor was not going to let them leave, out of concern for his latest patient’s health. Yuuri changed his mind peacefully, with several million yen and the casual production of a knife between Yuuri’s fingers. They had whittled away several hours in this little coast town, far from Hasetsu and yet not far enough, and Yuuri could not afford to waste any more time.

When the yakuza doctor gave Yuuri an unlabeled bottle of sedatives in parting, Yuuri nearly laughed. He took it nevertheless.

He drove the car which had belonged to Okukawa Minako. Viktor was still unconscious in the passenger’s side. Frequently, as he drove, Yuuri would use his right hand to check the pulse in Viktor’s wrist, just to prove to himself that he was still alive. His pulse was not particularly strong, but it grew no weaker every time he checked, and Katsuki Yuuri took this as a good omen.

The doctor had given him morphine, and so when Viktor at last did wake, he was dreamily incoherent. He spoke nothing but Russian, and even that was poor. He said Yuuri’s name once or twice and Yuuri--still driving, as he had been for hours now--passed a quiet hand over Viktor Nikiforov’s glassy half-lidded gaze. He said, “I’m here, Viktor.”

“I fell asleep.” He sounded upset.

“You passed out from the pain. Then Yuko’s doctor gave you morphine.”

“Mm.” He fell silent for a moment. Then he said, “Sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?” Yuuri could not look at him. He had been driving for hours on no sleep, and was so thoroughly exhausted he worried that any lapse in his concentration on the road would kill them. “You’re alive. That’s all I wanted.”

“It was...this was my fault.”

“It’s over now.” It wasn't quite. Yuuri still had to get them out of Japan, still had to keep Viktor alive until then so he could make peace with Christophe Giacometti, still had to fix business in Tokyo now that Minako was gone. He hadn't even recovered her body, and though he knew that was the practical best case scenario (when the police found her dead in his parents’ house, the media would briefly consider the discovery a definitive end to the Okukawa terror, and this would give Yuuri time to consider his options), this made it difficult to mourn. He hadn't even had time to decide whether or not he wanted to cry.

In any case, it wouldn't be over until Viktor Nikiforov was back in Saint Petersburg and Katsuki Yuuri was not. But Viktor didn’t need to know that right now. Yuuri repeated himself: “It’s over now.”

“Mm.” Minako’s car had an automatic shift. Thus Yuuri could not justify denying Viktor his right hand when he sleepily sought it out, entwining their fingers clumsily and settling them against his left leg. “Okay.”

Yuuri waited for him to lapse back into sleep. It was easier to drive, easier to think, when he knew there was no one watching him. Not to mention the longer Viktor resisted the pull of morphine, the more Yuuri began to worry about his tolerance of the sedatives he had received. It was going to be a long flight to Busan.

“Yura,” Viktor murmured after several minutes. When Yuuri cast him a glance, he saw his eyes were closed. His face was sallow, and Yuuri tried not to let this worry him. “Can I...ask you something?”

Yuuri looked out to the road again. “Yes,” he said. “But then you need to sleep.”

“Mm.” His fingers were cold. Yuuri tapped a gentle rhythm against the back of his hand. “It’s about...before.”

“Yes,” Yuuri said impatiently. He was tired, and irritable, and he wanted very much some time to himself now. He had decided, just now, that he was indeed going to cry over Okukawa Minako. “Viktor. I won’t be angry.”

“Okay,” Viktor mumbled. His lips were bloodless. He had begun to shiver again, though Japanese summers were considerably warmer than Russian ones. Still, he went on. His voice was soft. “Three years ago, Yura, were you...would you really have married me?”

Yuuri did not have to consider his response. He said, “Yes,” and it was true. “In any crumbling Petersburg church you wanted.”

“Oh.” There was weight to the syllable. There was weight, too, when Viktor whispered, “I messed up, then.”

Yuuri felt himself smile fractionally. Rather than respond, he advised gently, “Go to sleep, Vitya.” He kept his hand still in Viktor Nikiforov’s until he did.

Then, at last, Katsuki Yuuri allowed himself to cry.

* * *

Nishigori Yuko found that, of them all, she liked Katsuki Mari best.

She decided this fifteen minutes before they were scheduled to leave for Busan, when she found Yuuri’s sister smoking her way through half a pack of cigarettes on the balcony. She evidently did not hear Yuko step outside behind her, and so Yuko closed the patio door audibly to announce her presence. Katsuki Mari did not turn.

“Do you all move so goddamn quietly?”

Nishigori Yuko smiled. “I don't notice anymore. Do we?”

“Yes.” Mari flicked ash off the end of her cigarette. “Like fucking ghosts.”

“I suppose it's just something you pick up on,” Yuko said. Katsuki Mari offered her the pack of cigarettes, and she took one with a nod of thanks. “After a while.”

She lit the cigarette and set her elbows on the balcony railing. A dark storm loomed in the distance, which concerned her. They were flying to South Korea, and on a deeply time-constrained schedule.

“Why did you start?”

Mari had asked it, and the question took Yuko by surprise. She said, “Hm?”

“Why did you start?” Mari repeated. “Doing--this? Working with the Okukawas?”

“Oh.” Yuko cast her gaze downward into the garden. “It’s funny, because when I look back on it now, I can’t remember, really. I didn't quite have a family, I guess. And there was money in it.” She shrugged. “Minako wasn’t kind, but she was something. She taught me to fight.”

“I guess I’m just trying to figure it out,” Mari murmured, and Yuko nodded. She knew what she meant.

“There’s not really--there’s not really reason to it,” she said quietly. “You lose control of it too quickly. She has something you want, and so you do her favors and run her drugs, and then suddenly she has everything you want. And you’re not even sure what it is, or why you want it. By then, you've done too much, and you’re in too far, and so you just keep going.” She tipped back her head. The skies were gloomy.

“What--what was it for him?” They were all afraid to say his name now. Like naming their ghost would curse them all, deprive him of peace now that he was dying, like it would never end if they let such an invocation fall from their lips. “What did she have?”

Yuko smiled. It was a sincere one, and nearly not sad. “Dance.”

“Dance,” Mari echoed, and she sounded relieved that it was nothing more. Nothing like _family_. “Yeah.”

Yuko dipped her head. She let the silence blanket them for a moment, until it became stifling, and then she briskly went on.

“Then she has you murder for her. You don't realize until after you’ve done it how bad it is, because you're just a kid and consequences don't exist yet in your head, but they do now. Then you have to stay, because you can't go anywhere else with that blood on your hands.”

“That's fucked up,” Katsuki Mari said, and Yuko laughed.

“Yeah.” She blinked. “I guess so.”

“What did you do for her?” Mari looked at her. Yuko realized again, as she did every time she looked one of the Katsukis in the face, that this was the last piece of Katsuki Yuuri she was ever going to see. “You didn't go to Russia?”

“No,” Yuko said. “Not like--not like he did, at least. I went to Seoul. Started in the fighting business, trafficking when I could. Usually I was too busy getting the shit kicked out of me by men twice my size, but I learned quickly.” Yuko smiled, and she knew by the feel of it that it was a bit wicked. “I became one of the best Chil Sung Pa fighters in Seoul, for a time. Met Takeshi in Korea too, and I made the Nishigori family was what it is now. Then Minako called me back to Tokyo.” She dropped the smile. “Three years ago.”

“Three years ago,” Mari echoed softly.

“I was going to go to Russia then,” Yuko said. “Just for revenge’s sake. But I was pregnant, and either way Minako wasn’t going to let me. After Yuuri, I was her most valuable investment.” She laughed. “But I was going to kill him.”

“My brother is in love with him,” said Katsuki Mari softly, and Yuko nodded.

“I think he’ll always be in love with him. Yuuri doesn't give up on those things.”

“How is it fair that you know him better than I do?” The question was short, suddenly angry. Nishigori Yuko had expected it.

“It isn’t fair,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not.” Mari put out her cigarette on the metal railing. She scowled.

Yuko said softly, “I am.”

“If you were sorry,” Mari drawled, sounding very much like her brother in this moment, in her northern affectation and deceptively calm lilt of her voice, “you’d have done more.”

“I have a family of my own, Katsuki Mari--”

“And you took _mine_ from me!” Mari snarled, striking the railing with the heel of her hand. Yuko realized dimly that Yuuri’s sister was crying, and that she still looked gloriously angry despite the tears.

“We were just kids,” Yuko whispered, and in her memory they were, picking fights and teasing one other and sharing first kisses like kids did. Yes, Minako had been there, had ultimately ruined it, but that didn't mean they had started out bad. “You don't understand. We were just kids.”

Mari would not look at her. Yuko desperately wanted for her to look at her.

“I want you to teach me to fight.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Now, Mari looked her in the face. Fiercely. “Teach me to fight.”

Yuko closed her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Once we leave.” It was the least she could do, after all. She had destroyed the Katsukis, fourteen years ago. It was only retribution that she keep them alive at the expense of her own grief now, and she thought Katsuki Mari knew it.

She thought also that Katsuki Mari would have made a fine Okukawa fifteen years ago, and Yuko was suddenly overwhelmingly grateful that she hadn't.

In her pocket, Yuko’s phone began to ring.

* * *

Viktor Nikiforov had terrible, feverish nightmares. In them, Yuuri was killing him.

It was strange, because as Katsuki Yuuri was killing him, Viktor could think of nothing but of how wildly he wanted to _kiss_ him. There was blood on Yuuri’s hands, blood on Viktor’s lips, and even as he found the cool, removed look on Yuuri’s face terrifying, Viktor wanted to die with Yuuri’s mouth on his.

He said, “Yuuri,” softly, and there was something--some pain in his stomach which threatened his coherency--which broke the word in half. There were slick tears on his face. There were shards of bone in his lungs.

Then it was a new dream, and they were on a stage. Viktor recognized the Mariinsky from a lifetime of attending it. The two of them were dancing a pas de deux. As he always had been, Viktor was Siegfried. This time, Yuuri was the white swan, not the black.

But there was something wrong. Yuuri would not look at him. Viktor wanted Yuuri to look at him. When he opened his mouth to say so, it was blood, not words, that poured from his lips.

He noticed now that theater was empty. Viktor felt like sobbing, though despite the slippery abundance of blood this time nothing seemed to hurt. Still, he was terrified, and the hollowness in his chest made him achingly sad.

Yuuri looked at him finally and edged his thumb against the corner of Viktor’s mouth, like only that could help fix all this blood. He caught Viktor when he collapsed, though saving the prince had never been the white swan’s job.

Again. In Yuuri’s childhood bedroom, in Viktor’s library, on the beach in Hasetsu, at the Mariinsky, the Mikhailovsky, and the Bolshoi. Sometimes it was Yuuri with the knife, sometimes it was not. Each time, it was Yuuri who brought his hand carefully over Viktor’s eyes, each time it was Yuuri who whispered, _“Anata,_ it's okay. _Anata_. Aren’t you tired?”

* * *

The flight to South Korea was easier. Minako had taken care of everything, as her final favor to Nishigori Yuko. It was for Yuuri’s benefit, always.

Beside Yuuri, Viktor Nikiforov shivered. His face was slick with sweat, and there was a worrying pallor to his cheeks. Yuuri no longer had his jacket--it had been left in Hasetsu, with the rest of his bare minimum possessions which he had brought to Japan--and so there was nothing with which to keep him warm. Yuuri pulled his hair back from his face and kept his other hand folded against his cheek.

Yuuri hadn't slept. He was too afraid to sleep. At least Yuko was expecting them now, but this was still little consolation. There was plenty that could go wrong between now and the time Yuko intercepted them in Busan, plenty that could go wrong after that. It became more likely with each passing moment that Viktor Nikiforov was dying.

Yuuri knew it. He had nearly died twice, and he knew intimately what it looked like. Ever so often, he checked Viktor’s pulse in his throat, and finding it still present, closed his eyes in thanks. Perhaps his mother had never managed to instill proper Shintoism in him, but Yuuri still knew to give gratitude where it was due.

Beneath his hand, Viktor Nikiforov flinched. He suffered nightmares, which Yuuri had acknowledged but did not know how to prevent. He had tried waking him, but at last the sedatives Yuko’s doctor had given him had taken hold. From sleep, Viktor Nikiforov was unshakable.

And so Yuuri did his best to keep him comfortable. At one point he had pulled Viktor’s head gently into his lap, tangling his right hand in his silvery pale hair and laying his left arm across Viktor’s chest. It had comforted him--Yuuri, that was--to touch him. The contact seemed to bring less consolation to Viktor, but that was fine. Beneath Yuuri’s hands, his frantic heartbeat slowed, and his troubled expression softened.

Tender as it was, this arrangement did not last long. Viktor began to turn too violently in his sleep for Yuuri to trust himself not to accidentally let him slip off of his lap. Now Viktor Nikiforov slept contorted strangely across his reclined chair, his head thrown back and his fingers twitching. Yuuri did not know how to amend this without touching his bandaged torso, and so he left him as he was. He still kept his palm against his cheek, and when Viktor flinched terribly, he struck Yuuri’s hand. Katsuki Yuri withdrew his touch sharply, but the damage was done. Viktor Nikiforov’s cry was soft, and then he opened his eyes.

He was not awake--not really--and this was immediately evident to Yuuri in the way his gaze fell on him dreamily. He said, “Yurochka,” and it was a child’s name. Even at his most lovelorn, Viktor had rarely ever used it.

To hear it now was a physical pain beneath Katsuki Yuuri’s ribs. Still, he smiled quietly.

“Yes?”

“Not...feeling well.”

“I know, _anata_. It hurts to be shot.”

Sleepy angle to his mouth, to his half-lidded eyes. “Head hurts.”

“Hm.” Yuuri gave him time to protest, to object, as he leaned carefully forward and pressed a chaste kiss to each side of his temple. When Viktor sighed, Yuuri kissed his eyelids, his nose, his jaw. He did not kiss his mouth. “Where does it hurt, specifically?”

“Oh.” His voice was quiet, sleep-rough and lovely. “I think everywhere.”

“Everywhere?” Yuuri aimed for an unconcerned tone, a bit softer than teasing. “I’m not sure I can fix everywhere, _anata_. Does this make it better?” He had his fingers gently at his temples, stroking back his hair, and nearly imperceptibly, Viktor Nikiforov nodded.

“Can you--can you tell me what happened?”

“You were shot,” Yuuri said. “Yuko has a doctor in the north, on the coast, and so I took you there. Don’t touch.” He pulled Viktor’s heavy hand away from his side. “There was a lot of internal bleeding. I shouldn't have moved you, but we didn't really have much of a choice.”

“Oh,” Viktor murmured. “Minako?”

“She’s dead.” Yuuri hoped he didn't notice how his mouth trembled at the words.

“M’sorry, Yura.”

“S’fine.” Yuuri briefly closed his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“Oh, love.” The word did not make Yuuri flinch. He swallowed firmly, then nodded.

“You should go back to sleep.”

“M’not tired.” His eyes were closed. He appeared thoroughly exhausted.

“There’s no need to lie.” Yuuri dragged a flat hand through his own hair. “You need the sleep. What were you dreaming?”

Now, he opened his eyes. There was a startling moment of clarity in his face.

“Nothing.”

Yuuri looked at him softly. He said, “Okay.” He didn't believe him, of course, but that was fine. It was all fine. Yuuri was going to pieces, and it was okay. “That’s good, _anata_. That’s good. Go to sleep now.”

“Mm.” Clumsily, high on painkillers and dizzying sedatives and incredibly feverish, Viktor entwined his fingers with Yuuri’s. He said, “You’re okay now, Yura. Yeah?”

Yuuri couldn’t fathom what that meant. To coax him from consciousness, he nodded. “Yes, Viktor.” He touched the fingers of his other hand to his mouth, and Viktor parted his lips obediently. As if this was an appropriate time. Yuuri closed his mouth with a gently guiding hand against his jaw. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Yuuri had slept eight of the past seventy-two hours. When the jet landed just outside of Busan, South Korea, he felt as if he might collapse. Yuko, having arrived to the country a few hours before, was there to meet him.

“Oh,” she said, boarding the plane so she could help Yuuri lift Viktor Nikiforov’s deadweight to his feet. Yuuri was no longer strong enough to trust himself with something so fragile, and so he let Yuko do most of the heavy lifting. She insisted.

They laid him in the back of a shiny black Audi, and then Yuuri leaned exhaustedly against the metal body of the car. Yuko stood in front of him, and she said lowly, “We have things to discuss, Katsuki Yuuri.”

“Please don't yell yet.” Yuuri rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I can't even see straight. I don't think I’d survive a fight.”

“Is she really--”

“She’s dead.” Yuuri felt his teeth snap too tightly together. “I saw it.”

“Oh, no,” said Nishigori Yuko, and Yuuri managed a smile.

“Good riddance, I suppose, yeah?”

“Oh, Yuuri.” She was not crying. She reached out and swiped away Yuuri’s tears. They kept returning, even when he thought he was at last out of them. “Baby. It’s okay.”

“Sorry.” He was making a fool of himself. He shook his head. “Haven’t really slept.”

“It’s okay to cry, love,” Yuko said. She embraced him carefully, but not hesitantly. As if she was mindful of how breakable he was, not as if she was fearful of him. It was such a rare kind of touch that Yuuri felt the tears come even more fiercely. “Even for her. It’s okay.”

Yuuri needed to eat. He needed to take a shower. He needed to lie down and sleep for three days straight. He did none of these things on the car ride to his parents’ new safehouse in Busan. He merely stared out the window from the back seat, Viktor Nikiforov’s head in his lap, compulsively threading his fingers through his hair. He knew when Nishigori Yuko looked at him worriedly from the rearview mirror, and he ignored her gaze.

“Yuuri,” she said at last, and now he looked. “You’re not going back to Russia, are you?”

“I can’t.” The words came too readily. He sounded too certain, and that, of course, exposed his lack of certainty over it all. “I won’t.”

“Then will you stay in Japan?”

“I don't know, Yuko.” He hardened his voice, so to communicate that this was the end of the conversation. “I have to think about it.”

“Of course. I’m sorry,” his best friend said quietly, and Yuuri dipped his head. They said very little else during the rest of the drive.

* * *

They fought in front of his parents, and Yuko felt a bit of guilt over this. It was mostly Yuuri’s fault.

“You’re still an Okukawa,” he said while he sat at the dining table. Yuko was amazed he was still sitting upright. He looked three seconds from collapse. “You answer to me now.”

“Fuck off,” Yuko said. There was little venom to it. Still, Yuuri narrowed his eyes.

“I’m speaking practically--”

“Are we really going to discuss this now?” There was no common language between Yuuri and Yuko that his family did not also share. “In front of your parents?”

“Is there a better time to discuss it?”

_“Yes,”_ Yuko snapped. “Any time but right now.”

“We need to take immediate action,” Yuuri insisted.

Yuko bit back, “The only immediate action you're taking is a shower. And a nap.”

“Don’t _patronize_ me--”

“You’re exhausted, covered in blood, and you’re in shock. I’m not discussing business with you for the next three days, at least.”

“I’m giving you an order, Nishigori Yuko--”

“And I will not take orders from you, Katsuki Yuuri.” Yuko gripped his jaw between her fingers, yanked his face upward so his eyes met hers. “Do not presume to give them to me again.”

When she released him, Yuuri laughed sharply. Then he apologized.

“I’m sorry. I appear to only be capable of doing Russian business now.”

Yuko looked acutely at his family. His mother appeared horrified by the blood stiffening Yuuri’s clothes. His father looked horrified for a supposedly differing reason. Mari did not look horrified at all.

Softly, Yuko said, “Let me help you clean up, Yuuri,” and when he did not protest further, Yuko helped him out of the chair and guided him to the first floor bathroom.

She waited outside the door and listened to the shower run, since Yuko did not trust Yuuri in his current state not to pass out against the shower wall and inadvertently drown himself. She did not allow him to lock the door.

When Yuuri was done, he opened the door. Yuko had been leaning against it, and she scrambled to stay upright when the support suddenly went out from beneath her. Quietly, Yuuri smiled.

“Worrying about me, Yuko?” he murmured, and Yuko said, “Always, baby.” She stood and offered him her arm to hold and steady himself.

“Phichit?” he asked as she led him onward, and Yuko shook her head.

“Stayed in Kyoto. He’s leaving for Thailand in a few days.” Yuko dipped her head briefly. “I think he didn't want to face your family anymore, believing you were going to die.”

“Oh,” Yuuri said. He sounded upset. Yuko remained silent, allowing him to consider everything.

“Here.” She stopped him in front of the door of an uninhabited bedroom but Yuuri, terribly sleep-deprived and heavy against her, kept going. He stumbled initially, and then placed a flat palm against the wood grain of the closed door.

“Is this where he is?” he murmured. Yuko frowned.

“No, love. This is your room.”

“I want his room.”

“I don't think it's a good idea for you to share a room while he's recovering, Yuuri,” Yuko said hesitantly. Yuuri insisted.

“Yuko,” he murmured. “I need--I need to know--”

Yuko remembered now that Yuuri was not returning to Russia. There was grief in the turn of his mouth.

“Okay, baby.” She sighed. “I’ll take you to him.”

On the plane when she had first met them, Viktor Nikiforov had looked like he was dying. A thorough inspection of his vitals supported the more favorable hypothesis that he was not, and this is what Yuko told Katsuki Yuuri every time he asked. He asked quite frequently, especially now.

“He’s going to be okay?”

“Yes, Yuuri.”

“Oh.” He closed his eyes and swayed against her. “Good.”

Yuko wrapped an arm around his waist. She said, “You love him, Yuuri?”

“Mm,” he said into her hair. “Think so.”

Yuuri insisted on sleeping not in a bed, but in the chair by the window in Viktor Nikiforov’s room. Yuko did not protest--at this point, she didn't not care where he slept as long as he did.

Yuko placed a chaste kiss on his forehead. Yuuri was asleep before she left the room.

* * *

Viktor Nikiforov was in and out of consciousness for several days. When he was awake--or at least nearly so--Katsuki Yuuri read to him.

When he was asleep too, Yuuri read to him, but Viktor had difficulty reaching this conclusion because time and mental clarity slipped so evasively from him in those several days and nights, and he had trouble following the progression of either hours or plot. He knew only that Yuuri read to him, and that he did it in Russian.

He touched him too, innocently on the palms and on his face and sometimes sliding a gentle, cool hand across his chest when the room was darkest and Yuuri whispered in Russian that the rest of the house had gone to sleep. Sometimes Viktor would try to touch him back, to push his hair from his face or trace a thumb across his lips like he used to, but every part of him was so heavy and his head was so clouded that he always gave up. On rarer occasions, Yuuri would divine what he meant by the twitching of his fingers, and he would lift Viktor’s hand to his face and spread his fingers across Yuuri’s cheek, and in a quiet, roughened voice Viktor would thank him.

But these instances always ceased when there was company. When they had an audience, Yuuri did not touch him. He moved away from Viktor, closed the book, and there was always something guilty in the slope of his shoulders then. Viktor said nothing of it.

Because alone, when Viktor was half-awake and half-dreaming, Yuuri would read.

“Mercy,” Yuuri would say quietly, and his hand would smooth carefully over Viktor’s brow and cool the feverish heat there, and Viktor would close his eyes. “It sometimes creeps, quite unexpectedly and perfidiously, through the narrowest cracks.”

And Viktor would sigh, and on certain occasions Yuuri would drop his head and kiss him softly--so softly Viktor was at first offended that Yuuri believed him so breakable now, and later he would wonder if he had really felt him on his mouth at all or if he had simply indulged himself with an imagining of it--and Viktor would go to sleep.

Time was difficult, but Viktor judged the progression of it by Yuuri’s growing comfort with him. As the days passed, Yuuri began to share the bed with him, sleeping sometimes nearly through the night against Viktor’s shoulder. He read to him from there too.

“He does not deserve the light,” Yuuri whispered once against his hair. He had helped Viktor carefully upright and against Yuuri’s side, and he balanced the book now between their pressed-together thighs. It was late at night. Yuuri had told him that Nishigori Yuko had made the executive decision to take Viktor off of his sedatives cold (which was uncomfortable) because he was prone to addiction now (which was humiliating), and as a result everything had begun to take on realities again. Every part of Viktor’s body which had retained its feeling began to hurt. “He deserves peace.”

Katsuki Yuuri traced a drifting line across Viktor Nikiforov’s face. Viktor tipped back his head quietly and kissed his fingers when they passed over his mouth.

“Yura,” Viktor murmured, perhaps a bit delirious. The window had been opened, and the cool night air made him shiver. “Are you going to stay?”

“For the night,” Yuuri said softly. Viktor did not have the energy to inform him that wasn’t what he meant. Still, he frowned.

“S’good,” Viktor mumbled. “I miss you.”

“I’m still here, _anata.”_

Viktor brought down his head and pressed his cheek deeper into Yuuri’s shoulder. The slight discomfort was worth the insistent reminder of Katsuki Yuuri’s tangibility. “I know.”

“You’re feverish again,” Yuuri murmured. “And you’re saying nonsense.”

“M’not.” Viktor attempted to pull his head away irritably. He didn’t get so far as a fierce frown against Yuuri’s shoulder. “It’s not nonsense.”

“Okay, love.” By the tone of his voice, Yuri didn't believe him. But he did wrap an arm gently against his back and drag his cool palm against Viktor's chest. Viktor sighed. “Go to sleep now.”

“Yura,” Viktor insisted.

“Yes, Viktor.”

“Can't really feel my fingers. M’still wearing the ring, yeah?”

Soft, fumbling sounds in the dark. Katsuki Yuuri slid his hand agonizingly slowly down Viktor’s arm, stopping at last to examine Viktor’s hand by touch. He said, “Yes, Viktor. You’re still wearing the ring.”

“Oh, good.” He lapsed into silence. Yuuri stroked the back of his hand absently. “Yura.”

A sigh. Yuuri said, “Yes, Viktor.”

“Can you kiss me?”

There was amusement now in his tone. “Is that all you want?”

“Mm.” Viktor felt his mouth curve drowsily. “Yeah.”

“Alright.” Yuuri’s hand which had previously folded against his chest, which now traced gentle shapes on the back of Viktor’s hand, shifted to the bare space between his shoulder blades. Yuuri eased Viktor off of his shoulder and onto the bed again. “But after, you are going to sleep. Does your head hurt?”

“Mm,” Viktor hummed again. “S’hazy.”

“Better than the alternative, love,” Yuuri whispered. He tapped a finger against Viktor Nikiforov’s lips. Sleepily, Viktor nodded.

There was soft movement against his throat, and a gentle touch to his cheek. “Tell me when to stop,” Yuuri murmured, now just barely against his mouth. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Viktor tipped his chin and smiled softly. He said nothing at all, and in making good on his end of the deal Katsuki Yuuri took his time. Even with his lips brushing Viktor’s, he made him wait, made him ask for it, made him part his lips and breathe his name before he placed both hands on the curve of his jaw and kissed him slowly. Softly. There was a bit of teasing to it, of course, because this was Yuuri and some things never changed with him, but mostly it was careful and unassuming and overwhelmingly, terribly gentle.

And then he went on, plotting kisses up the slope of his nose and across his brow, and Viktor Nikiforov did not tell him to stop. He was so lucky to have this--this moment and this life and Katsuki Yuuri himself. He didn’t deserve it, and yet here it was. Here Yuuri was, and Viktor wanted nothing more.

_Are you going to stay?_ The question and its uncertain answer revisited him. Viktor Nikiforov tried shoving it aside, but it kept coming back. _Are you going to stay? Are you going to stay?_ Somehow, he couldn't find it in himself to ask.

And eventually, Katsuki Yuuri pulled away. He whispered, “Okay,” and Viktor did not know what he meant by it. Yuuri repeated the word softly, in a way that suggested he had caught a tinge of Viktor’s own delirium. “Okay, okay, okay.”

Entranced as he was, Viktor Nikiforov closed his eyes, and he nodded.

* * *

 

The dog was the first one of them in the house. Yuuri dropped to one knee as the animal scrambled, nails clicking on the wooden floors, to meet him. Makkachin planted his paws on Yuuri’s shoulders and shoved him to the floor, and Yuuri laughed.

“Where--” Mari began from the hall, and Christophe Giacometti said, “Katsuki.”

Yuuri sobered. He scratched at the poodle’s ears and then gently pushed him off his chest. He stood, and Viktor’s dog lapped at his hand.

“Chris.” And behind him: “Seung-gil.”

In English, Mari said, “Who the fuck let you in?”

Chris bowed shortly. “My apologies if we’re intruding. I’m Christophe Giacometti.”

Mari narrowed her eyes. “I know who you are.”

Chris smiled charmingly. “And I know that you’re Katsuki Mari. Just as charismatic as your little brother.”

“Don’t talk to her,” Yuuri snapped in Russian, and Chris raised his hands in a gesture of innocence.

“If you insist.” He stepped closer. His own voice dropped into seriousness. “Where is he?”

“He’s not well enough to travel,” Yuuri said, though he did not know why he did. What did he care whether Viktor was healthy enough to go back to Russia yet? Every moment he spent in his parents’ new home was dangerous. Yuuri should have been grateful to finally lose him.

“Unfortunate.” Chris took another step. He was several centimeters taller than Yuuri, and had always liked to use this as an excuse to throw around his weight in Petersburg. Yuuri would not stand for it in his own territory. “Petersburg needs him back.”

“Yuuri,” said Mari softly, and Yuuri made a terse gesture with his right hand. He knew, had seen immediately upon their arrival, that Giacometti and Lee were armed. Yuuri’s mother had taken to protest over his carrying a gun in her house at all times, and so for her sake Yuuri was not.

“You’re not bringing guns into my parents’ house,” he said lowly. “Give them up.”

“Are you giving me an order, Yuuri?” Chris tilted his head to the side, and Yuuri had half a mind then to simply disarm him by force. He did not.

“I was under the impression that this was a diplomatic endeavor,” said Yuuri. “Is that no longer the case?”

“You were the first to tell me that good diplomacy is the kind that employs a healthy measure of distrust,” Chris said sweetly. “Is _that_ no longer the case?”

“Give me your gun,” Yuuri hissed. Makkachin, evidently sensing the familiar tension and knowing he was not likely to receive affection in this atmosphere, had moved on to pleading attention from Yuuri’s older sister. Mari placed a consoling hand on the dog’s skull in Yuuri’s peripheral vision. “Or I will take it from you.”

“For god’s sake, give them up.” Yuuri did not turn at the sound of Viktor’s voice, but he did narrow his eyes. Yuuri could have handled this himself. Besides, Viktor was still under serious restrictions to his bed and shouldn’t even have left his room without assistance. It had only been a few weeks. There was still ripe opportunity for Viktor’s side to split open and spill his life out onto the floor, after all. “Don’t be difficult, Chris.”

At the appearance of his master at the top of the stairs, Viktor’s dog yelped delightedly and scrambled with new energy across the length of the room. Mari attempted to loop her fingers beneath Makkachin’s collar, but only succeeded in being yanked about a meter in the direction of Viktor Nikiforov before she let the dog go. Behind Yuuri, there was the soft gasp of a man who was still nursing a serious injury to the torso experiencing the sudden weight of a very large poodle on his chest.

On the first floor of the house, Christophe Giacometti and Lee Seung-gil passed over their weapons. Yuuri said nothing as he took them and carried them in a neutral location on the dining room table.

“Mom’s going to be pissed if she see guns on her table,” Mari said. Yuuri waved the comment away.

“Then don't let her see them.” He hadn’t lived with his blood family in so long, Yuuri had let a bit of his old etiquette slip. In any case, conducting yakuza business around three powerfully disapproving forces such as the rest of the Katsuki family was annoyingly difficult. His mother tended to express her disapproval in dinners made furiously from scratch, Mari in dry commentary on Yuuri’s supposed attitude, and his father in long, quiet sighs which had become a common soundtrack to this temporary life in Busan.

Despite himself, Katsuki Yuuri welcomed even their disapproval. At least it was something, meaning it was not silence.

Lee and Giacometti were still waiting in the hall. Mari leaned against the wall in the kitchen and said in Japanese, “He has a dog.”

“Yes.” Yuuri looked at her flatly.

“You’re damn predictable, Yuuri.”

“What does his owning a dog have anything to do with me being predictable?” Yuuri snapped, though he felt the heat rush across his face incredibly quickly. Katsuki Mari only shook her head and smiled.

Yuuri scowled and left the kitchen. His pride was wounded. Was he really quite so easy to read?

He did not order Chris or Seung-gil to follow--they did so on their own.

In the bedroom which had fast become Viktor’s own, which had more slowly and more quietly become Yuuri’s too, Katsuki Yuuri said, “It’s up to you.”

“And do you not have an opinion on it?” Viktor’s tone was calculatedly amused. When he tipped back his head and looked at Yuuri, his slight smile dwindled. “Oh.”

“It’s been too long, Vik.” Chris looked gentle, encouraging. “The house needs order.”

But Viktor Nikiforov did not respond. He kept looking at Yuuri, and again he said, “Oh.” It was softer this time.

“Viktor--” Chris began anew, but Viktor interrupted him.

“I need to speak to Yuuri alone,” he said quietly.

Christophe Giacometti snapped, “Haven’t you have two weeks to do that?” Regardless, he got to his feet. “Fine. Five minutes.” He pulled Lee from the room.

Viktor whispered, “You’re not coming back.”

“You knew this.”

“I didn’t know--” His voice was rising in grief. Viktor caught himself. “I thought you might have changed your mind.”

“I can’t go back to Russia,” Yuuri said. “It’s not home.”

He hadn’t meant to wound with the words, but Viktor Nikiforov looked distressed all the same. He said, “Why not?”

“Viktor.” Yuuri was close enough to reach his face. He touched his jaw, and Makkachin cheerfully pushed his head in the direction of Yuuri’s hand. “Don’t make me answer questions like that.”

“This is about Spain,” Viktor said, and Yuuri nodded once.

“Partly,” he agreed softly. “Partly because I still need time to think, and partly because Minako is dead and it's my job to fix the business, and partly because I have a family again, Viktor.” He smiled. “There are a lot of reasons.”

“You have family in Petersburg too,” Viktor pleaded. “Me, and Yuri, and--”

“Viktor.” Yuuri removed his hand. His voice was still low. “You are asking me to choose between my blood family and yours, and you know what the answer will be. Leave it be.”

“Yuuri.” Viktor had taken up his old habit of saying his name like it was the only word he knew. There were endless definitions to the simple two syllables now. “Won’t you tell me what I can do--”

“It’s not a matter of you doing anything, Viktor.” Yuuri stepped back, then turned softly and left Viktor Nikiforov alone on the edge of the bed. “I just need time.”

“You didn't think the same two weeks ago--” Viktor began.

“Do not compare this situation to two weeks ago,” Yuuri interrupted him coldly. He had begun to shake. “Two weeks ago, I was dying, and I was not going to die with that weight on my shoulders. I now have a business to run and a family to keep. Do not be selfish with me.”

“Yuuri.” The inflection here on his name was different. This time, it meant _forgive me._ “Please.”

“It does appear that you will make it to thirty now, _anata_.” Now, kindly, exhaustedly, Yuuri smiled. “Congratulations, love.”

* * *

Yuri Plisetsky had return to Russia about one week previously. He was in the house on Nevsky with Otabek Altin when Viktor Nikiforov came home.

“You know I’ve never been to Kazakhstan,” Yuri mused. It was mid-morning. They were having breakfast. “When was the last time you went home?”

Otabek Altin looked at him curiously, as if he could not fathom why Yuri would ask. “I think a year ago,” he said.

Yuri frowned. “That’s a long time.” Otabek looked down at the surface of the table and laughed once.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked quietly. Yuri shrugged. He didn't know how to explain that he wanted to know because Yuri couldn't remember the last time he had wanted to know anything about Otabek Altin or where he had come from.

“What’s it like?”

Otabek looked at him. “What part?” he replied flatly. It was evident that he suspected Yuri of something unkind, or perhaps he was simply hesitant to give his home away to someone who had never expressed an interest in it before. Yuri felt himself blush.

“The part you’re from.” He realized now that he didn't _know_ what part of the country Otabek was from. “Where did you--”

“Almaty.” His gaze was wary. “That's where I’m from, now.”

“Now?”

“I grew up in a seaside town,” Otabek replied. “We moved to Almaty when I was younger. My father worked with the Plisetskys, even though he wasn’t one.”

Yuri paid careful attention to this use of past tense. He hadn’t known that about Otabek either. “Why did you move?”

“Almaty is bigger. It’s in the mountains, the old capital city.” Otabek briefly dipped his head. “It’s easier to do our kind of business in big cities, but you know that.”

Yuri folded his hands beneath his chin. “And what’s Almaty like?”

Otabek Altin blinked. He looked at Yuri for a long time before he spoke. “There’s a skating rink in the mountain valley. I used to take my sisters there every other week, before I took this job.”

At least Yuri had known this part--about the sisters. He felt heat spread across his face regardless. “I’m sorry.”

Otabek frowned. “What do you have to be sorry for, Yuri?”

“I never asked.”

“Well,” Otabek said, and he did not smile but he did not look quite angry either. “Now you have.”

“Do you hate this place?” He didn’t know what had compelled him to ask. Now that he had, Yuri regretted it. He worried Otabek might say yes.

There was a commotion in the room over, perhaps in the hall. Otabek Altin rose without answering Yuri’s question and turned in the direction of the sound.

Mila Babicheva appeared in the doorway. She said, “Nikiforov’s back,” and when Yuri stood abruptly from the table she stilled him with an uncharacteristically forgiving look. “Give him time.”

“What does that mean?” Yuri snapped. Mila shook her curls. There were yellowing bruises beneath her jaw.

“It means he’s alone, Yurochka,” she said softly. Then she turned, and disappeared again in the direction of the voices. Yuri, ignoring Mila’s warning, pursued her down the hall.

Viktor Nikiforov looked awful, but there was something to be said about his improvement since Yuri had last seen him. Still, he leaned on Christophe so he could press a palm lightly to his side, and when he met Yuri’s eyes there was something softly tragic about his face. He said, “Yura,” and attempted a flickery smile.

“You didn't bring him back?” Yuri demanded. “Why didn't you bring him back?”

The smile left him. Viktor said, “This really isn't the time, Yuri.” Behind him, Mila tilted her head and made a facial expression that was somewhat a cross between an _I told you so_ and a stern warning to keep his mouth shut. Yuri thought it didn't suit her.

“Where is he? Why didn't he come back?” Yuri felt his voice rising into hysterics and yet could not stop himself. “What did you _do?”_

“He made his own decision,” Viktor told him quietly, sharply. “Adults tend to do that, Yuri Plisetsky.”

Fury boiled in Yuri. He had come to like the Katsuki family in the brief time he had spent with them, and this had spurred a bit of a reminder in him of how much he had liked Katsuki Yuuri too. When both he and Viktor had turned up impossibly alive in South Korea, Yuri had thought _finally_. He had thought--naively, evidently--that they were all going to have a fucking happy ending.

“You got a second chance,” Yuri spat. “And you still managed to ruin it? How the _fuck--”_

“That’s enough.” There was no authority to Viktor Nikiforov’s tone. The lack of it silenced Yuri Plisetsky briefly, brought his rage to a cooling halt.

“I’m sorry,” Yuri whispered, and impulsively he pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes so they could not see him cry. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

Viktor, in a low voice: “Go.” Mila and Christophe heeded the order. So did Otabek Altin. Within moments, it was just Viktor Nikiforov and Yuri Plisetsky alone in the hall, and it felt like it was just the two of them left in the whole world.

“They were good terms,” Viktor said quietly. “We left on good terms.”

“But you still _left--”_

“Listen, Yura.” He could see how the diminutive hurt him to say. It was not his name for Yuri Plisetsky anymore, and Yuri knew as long as Viktor grieved, acknowledging Yuri Plisetsky would always be painful. He was a _reminder_. “Listen. I can't change what I’ve done. Nor can I expect him to blindly forgive me for it. Do you understand?”

“But--” God, he really was crying now. He felt the flush of his face and rubbed furiously at his cheeks to disguise it. His next words were humiliatingly childish, and they made him cry harder. “But he _loves_ you.”

“You think so?” Viktor Nikiforov smiled. Yuri scoffed.

“Yeah,” he said, a hint of old annoyance bleeding into his tone. He glared tearfully at Viktor Nikiforov. “Of _course_. It was so obvious. That's why I don't get why he isn't _here--”_

“Russia isn’t home,” Viktor said softly, and it sounded as if he was quoting someone else. “Do you understand, Yura? This will never be home for him.”

“But _we’re_ home,” Yuuri insisted. “Doesn’t--doesn't that count for anything?”

“I don’t know.” Viktor Nikiforov tipped his head back and gazed at the ceiling. There was horrible, damning grief in his expression, and something else too. “Maybe.”

Yuri clung to that something else in his expression, focused on cultivating what he thought might have been that same hope within himself. Now, it was all either of them had to hold in that lavish and echoey mausoleum on Nevsky Prospekt.

* * *

“Have you ever known something like this?” Viktor was still high--dizzyingly high. They were standing out on the balcony at the Nevsky house, and the sun was rising. When he looked at Katsuki Yuuri, he thought suddenly and overwhelmingly about how much he wanted to touch him. He was twenty-five.

Yuuri, beautiful even now, turned his face to Viktor and laughed. He said, “The sunrise, Vitya? I’ve seen it.”

“No no no no.” Viktor gestured for him to come to him excitedly, and when Yuuri did not seem to notice he became more frantic. “The _city_ , Yuuri. We own this entire _city_. Have you ever _thought_ about that?”

Yuuri smiled. His voice dipped into teasing condescension when when he said, “Minako owns Tokyo. I’m familiar with the concept.”

“Fuck Minako.” Viktor caught Yuuri’s wrist--his skin was cold. A comedown was fast approaching for the both of them, though Viktor was still too high to dread it yet. There was a sinking in his chest, a drifting cadence to his thoughts. And yet he looked at Yuuri, and he was okay. He had asked Yuuri to teach him what it meant to be good once, when he had first told Viktor about his family, and Viktor thought he understood the concept now. _This_ was good. There was nothing greater.

“Minako may have Tokyo, but until _you_ do, Yuuri, that can’t ever compare to this. So _look.”_

Katsuki Yuuri turned his face out to the red sun, to their waking city, and he laughed. Viktor watched the sun alight on his face and wash his skin gold. Viktor’s hand around Yuuri’s waist slid casually across his stomach and beside him, Yuuri’s light intake of breath was just barely audible.

“Remember this,” Yuuri whispered. Viktor suspected he did not even realize he had said it aloud. It was a private plea, designed for a future Viktor could not imagine nor comprehend in his current state, and yet he thought it a hopeful one. _Remember this._

And so, though the words were not for him, Viktor Nikiforov committed that morning to eternal memory. He had not forgotten it yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the phrase "these aren't the nineties" refers to the era during Yeltsin's presidency in which organized crime in Russia went largely unchecked by both Yeltsin's policy and the KGB, and therefore gained a relative stranglehold on the nation when the market opened. nowadays, what one would consider the mafia is generally less rampant than the period directly after the fall of the USSR.
> 
> damnatio memoriae is a Latin term and ancient Roman policy meaning "condemnation of memory."
> 
> both book references in this chapter are from The Master and Margarita. the quote about mercy which Yuuri reads is from the scene in which Margarita forgives a woman condemned to hell, and the line is spoken by the Devil. 
> 
> the second quote ("he does not deserve the light, he deserves peace") is from one of my favorite scenes, in which the Devil and heaven reach the agreement that the master is not quite suited for heaven, but that peace in hell with his lover is better than the life he is currently living in Moscow. this line is spoken by Matthew (as in the gospel writer, who is also an apocryphal character in the novel).
> 
> finally, the references or parallels to Swan Lake here and throughout the rest of the fic are all based on the Yuri Grigorovich libretto (the one used by the Bolshoi now). Prince Siegfried and Odette don't both die in this version, but are rather separated across worlds by the sorcerer who cursed Odette in the first place. (in the original, they die together and are reunited in the afterlife, but I tend to think the Grigorovich alteration is sadder.)
> 
> the final epilogue will be up either next week or the following. thank you so much for sticking with this fic till the end, and thank you for all comments and kudos!


	22. Epilogue: Saint Petersburg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recommended reading accompaniment is a continuous loop of samuel barber's adagio for strings op. 11, which is i think all i listened to for five days while writing this

Katsuki Yuuri turned twenty-eight without ceremony or celebration.

The Okukawa syndicate had taken up temporary residence in Osaka--at least until the government-decreed manhunt for the family’s surviving members died down and they could return to Tokyo by the next summer. Nowadays, it was mostly Yuuri tending to business in relative quiet, with Yuko paying monthly visits when her own business in Kyoto allowed her to do so. They were biding their time. Yuuri had requested from Petersburg the assistance of one Minami Kenjirou, and on most days the boy’s talkative company and reverent worship of him made the calm less suffocating.

Nishigori Yuko visited during the evening of Yuuri’s birthday, and that was the height of the festivities. She brought with her a bottle of cognac, from which they allowed Minami to sip small amounts out of a glass while Yuuri and Yuko spoke.

“Happy birthday, Yuuri,” Yuko said with a gentle smile when she appeared on the doorstep, and she pressed the bottle into his hands as she kissed him on the cheek. “Takeshi and the girls give their best.”

“Do they,” Yuuri murmured, with a hint of bemusement. The triplets had begun to babble most infatuatedly about Katsuki Yuuri, much to the chagrin of their actual father. Yuuri didn't think he’d made such an impression on them in the short time they had been acquainted, but he did suppose his face was all over the Japanese news now. Again.

“Yes.” Yuko laid a hand against the same cheek she had kissed and stepped around him into the house. Minami Kenjirou hastened to greet her with a bow and she returned the gesture, which made him blush. Then Yuko tousled the boy’s hair, which made him blush further.

“Be honest with me, Kenjirou,” Yuko said lightheartedly. “How gloomy has it been since I last visited?”

“Um.” Kenjirou flashed a guilty look at Yuuri. He was honest. “Fairly gloomy.”

“Ah.” Yuko turned and gracefully relieved Yuuri of the cognac she had gifted him. Yuuri did not register the bottle had left his hands until he saw it in Yuko’s. “We're getting drunk then.”

Yuuri frowned, as if the proposition was an inconvenience to him, but he did not protest. While Yuko poured drinks, Minami said, “You never said it was your birthday.”

“Twenty-eight is nothing special,” Yuuri replied with a dismissive wave. He intercepted Minami’s glass as Yuko passed it his way and poured a portion of its alcohol into Yuuri’s own glass before handing it back over. He frowned at Yuko as he did so, and she tilted her head and smiled as if Yuuri’s newfound protective tendencies were endearing. “Just one more year.”

“I think it's special.” Kenjirou underestimated the bite of his drink and gulped too fast. While he coughed, Nishigori Yuko rubbed his shoulder consolingly. “You didn't even think you were going to survive this year, a few months ago.”

“Correct,” Nishigori Yuko agreed, in a tone which threatened _now celebrate._

Yuuri looked between the two of them--Yuko, with her gently stern frown and Kenjirou with his bright, naive smile--and raised his glass in a toast to them both.

Kenjirou could speak English, so there was no possibility of subtle conversation under his nose. Yuko waited until the boy had wandered away and distracted himself with the bluish darkness out the windows before she spoke.

“How are you doing, Yuuri?”

Katsuki Yuuri tipped back his head. He blinked at his best friend and said, “Alive.”

“Alive. Of course.” Softly, Yuko smiled. “Have you spoken to Chulanont?”

“Visiting Bangkok next week,” Yuuri said, reticent even with the warmth of liquor in him. He had become quieter in the past few months, and he knew it. It was a recent phenomenon on which Yuko commented often. “Safer to be seen in public in Thailand than here.”

“That’s good.” Yuko brought her hand upward from the curve of Yuuri’s skull, mussing his hair and then smoothing it down again. “I like him.”

“Yes.” Yuuri nodded absently as Yuko refilled his glass and her own.

After the consumption of a few more drinks, conversation flowed more easily. Yuuri felt the flush of his cheeks, the new looseness of his tongue, and he did not entirely mind. Yuko became younger as she drank, winding her fingers with Yuuri’s and laughing lightly and carelessly. Late in the night, she prompted new conversation with a soft, “And what about…”

“Yuko,” Yuuri warned, because he was not quite so drunk as that. Nishigori Yuko nodded, accepting the end to the topic, and topped off his drink.

Though he had not drunk much, the cognac had made Minami sleepy. He sat at the table beside Yuuri, and Yuuri watched his eyelids flutter and his head nod forward onto his chest.

Yuuri touched his shoulder. “Tired, kid?”

“No,” Kenjirou said quickly. He appeared embarrassed at having been found out so easily, but Yuuri only smiled.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Yuuri murmured. He stood, helping the boy to his feet as he did so. Minami mumbled a brief expression of gratitude when he swayed and Yuuri caught him by the shoulders.

“Don’t worry about it,” Yuuri said. Nishigori Yuko tilted up her face and smiled knowingly.

“Happy birthday,” Kenjirou said softly, and Yuuri nodded.

“Thank you,” he said. And that was that.

* * *

Phichit Chulanont treated him to dinner in his own apartment. He cooked it himself.

“I figured we couldn't really walk into any restaurant while you still have the same face that’s been all over the news for three months,” Phichit said cheerfully, and Yuuri nodded. He traced a pattern in the wood grain of the cheap table and watched a breeze stir the leaves of the basil plant Phichit kept on the windowsill. It was going to rain, and the room was heavy with the foreboding humidity of the fact.

Chulanont’s apartment was small--smaller than the one he had rented in Saint Petersburg--but endearing because it was personal in a manner the apartment in Petersburg could never be. Phichit seemed proud of it. Clearly, he had wanted Katsuki Yuuri to see his home.

“I’ll still show you Bangkok though,” he promised, sliding a hot, laden plate before Yuuri. “Once it gets dark.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri murmured. He added, “How are you doing?”

“There’s a warrant out for my arrest in Japan,” Phichit responded casually. “No one really cares enough to alert Thai police about that, though, so I’m doing pretty good.”

“My apologies.”

Phichit looked bemused. “I don't believe you’ve ever really meant that, when you’ve said it.”

“I meant it then,” Yuuri replied sharply, affronted. “I mean it now.”

“Of course.” He smiled easily. “How are you doing?”

Yuuri frowned. “People keep asking that.”

“Maybe because you never give a proper answer,” Phichit replied, and when Yuuri cut him a deadly look he merely laughed. “That doesn't scare me anymore.”

“I’m fantastic,” Yuuri said drily. Phichit Chulanont rolled his eyes.

“It doesn’t count as an answer if you're a dick about it.”

Insufferable. “I’m fine,” Yuuri amended, a bit sullenly. Phichit tilted his head to the left.

“Have you--”

“No.” Yuuri’s tone was firm. Phichit ignored it.

“Well, you should.”

“You and Yuko are the same,” Yuuri snapped. “Why do you care so much?”

Phichit Chulanont looked at him. His tone was gentle. “I thought for a long time about whether you deserved to get what you wanted, Katsuki Yuuri. I think I was obsessed with it, and I decided it didn't matter what you deserved, because I wanted it for you.”

“I don’t know if that’s what I want,” Yuuri said. Phichit smiled.

“That's fine. But are you happy where you are, Yuuri?”

Outside, the torrential rain had hit. Phichit stood and went to the window to close it. Yuuri gazed at the soaked windowpane and did not respond.

Softly, Phichit went on. “Do you think this is where you want it to end?”

* * *

Yuuri watched them fight. When Mari caught him doing so, she scowled.

“I don't want to hear it, asshole,” she called across the mats after Nishigori Yuko had caught her by the back of her neck and thrown her. She gasped, and then added, “How do you still do this? Doesn’t it kill you, at this age?”

“You’re still young,” Yuuri said, making his way quietly across the mats so he could offer his older sister his hand. “It’s not your age, just your lack of experience that hurts.”

“I’m sorry I’m not a martial arts expert with fifteen years of experience,” Mari snapped, and Yuuri smiled.

“I’m not faulting you that.” Yuuri pulled her to her feet. He said, “Hit me.”

Mari blinked. “Yuuri,” she said. “I’ve wanted to hit you for years. But I don’t think--”

“This is for my benefit.” Hiroko would be incredibly displeased if Mari was the only one of the Katsuki siblings to sport such deep bruises, conveniently timed with her younger son’s visit home. At least if Yuuri looked roughed up too, the ordeal could be played off as some sort of fair trade. “Work on your offense. Hit me, Mari. Not in the face, though, because I don't want the--”

Mari hit him in the face. Yuuri took several steps back but did not fall. He swore, possibly in Russian.

Behind them, Nishigori Yuko laughed. She said, “You were talking too much, love.”

Katsuki Mari stepped forward with an almost apologetic expression. She touched Yuuri’s cheek tentatively. “Is it going to bruise?”

“No,” Yuuri promised, at the same time that Yuko said cheerfully, “Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” Mari said. “Mom is going to be pissed.”

“I think she’d be happy to know that my bruises are coming from fighting you and not anything else,” Yuuri reassured her lightly. Still, he prodded his cheek with his fingers. “I’ll cover it up.”

“She’s seen you with worse,” Yuko said, and Mari winced. Yuuri nodded quietly.

“And she didn’t like that either,” Mari reminded them both. Then she dipped her head quickly, as if she had forgotten. “Thank you, Yuko. Are you staying?”

She meant for the night. Yuko bowed shallowly back and said, “Leaving.” She made eye contact with Yuuri. “I don’t want to be an unnecessary reminder. And I have business in Seoul tomorrow.”

“You don't have to--”

“Mari,” Yuuri murmured, placing a hand softly at his sister’s shoulder. “She’s married.”

Mari’s head turned quickly enough to give her whiplash. Her face was aflame when she hissed, “Shut _up_ , that's not what I--”

Nishigori Yuko laughed kindly. She said, “Another time. Thank you.”

“I’ll show you out,” Yuuri said, but Yuko stopped him.

“I can find my way out, Katsuki Yuuri.” She smiled, dipped her head. “This was my home once, you know.”

She left them both standing silent on the mats. Katsuki Mari gazed at the floor for a short eternity and then said, “I wasn’t flirting with her.”

Yuuri smiled. Of all the things he had been expecting her to say to him, this was among the lightest of them.

“I know that.” He dipped his head. “And she also knows that. Don’t let it eat you.”

“I had no intentions on letting it do so,” Mari said stiffly, and this response only coaxed Yuuri’s smile wider. He ducked, so his sister could not see him smirk.

“Good. We only need one yakuza in the family, and I’m afraid the business is something you marry into.”

Katsuki Mari scowled. She said, “Will you stop that?”

Yuuri dropped his smile, instinctively. “Stop what?”

“You won’t look at me.” Mari scrutinized him. “It’s making you seem guilty.”

Yuuri raised his eyebrows. “I am guilty of a lot of things.”

“Is lying to your sister one of them?”

Yuuri paused to consider it. “Not recently,” he said.

“Good.” Mari bumped his shoulder affectionately as she passed. She had become much more comfortable lately with speaking to him and touching him and treating him as if he was a good man. It made Yuuri feel warm, but also a bit ashamed. He could have been the almost-good man Katsuki Mari had convinced herself he was now, and yet he refused to be so. Did that count as lying?

“Yuuri,” his sister said. “You’re not happy, are you?”

Katsuki Yuuri closed his eyes. He said softly, “Where is this coming from? Did Yuko tell you to--”

“Yuko didn’t tell me anything,” Mari said. “I’m just not stupid. And I know you, baby brother, despite the fact that you so clearly resent that.”

“I don’t resent being known.” Yuuri was quiet. Were they going to fight now? They had been doing so _well_. He had been trying so hard with Mari lately.

“By us, you do.” Mari’s voice had gone cool. “And that’s something I can never figure out. Why do you hate us?”

“I don’t.” Yuuri breathed deeply once, twice, three times. He would not snap at his sister, of all people. He was better than that. “I simply think you would be better off not knowing everything about me.”

“Bullshit.” Mari scowled. “Do you know what I think it is, Yuuri? I’ll tell you.”

“Oh, _please_ do.” And there was some of that old Petersburg venom he had fought so hard to rid himself of in these months--but at least it was a mild dosage. Katsuki Mari could handle more than a few sharp words from the mouth of her little brother. And she had brought this upon herself--she had wanted Yuuri angry. She had wanted to push him. She always had, since they were kids.

“I think you’re punishing yourself for Hasetsu because that’s what you think you deserve,” Mari said sharply. “But you’re avoiding the rest of us so we can't also pass that judgement, because you’re afraid we’ll agree.”

“Why does this matter?” Yuuri whirled on her finally, and Mari took one involuntary step back. Deep within him, a sick insidious pleasure unfurled at inspiring fear in his older sister. Yuuri had nearly forgotten how he had liked to be feared. “Why are you so fixated on what doesn’t concern you, Mari? Did I invite you into this part of my life? Or is it just that nothing is private anymore? Why can't you just take the house and the money and let the rest of it _die?”_

Katsuki Mari tilted upward her chin. She reached out slowly--so as not to give Yuuri reason to hurt her, undoubtedly--and thumbed away some dampness on his cheek. “Shh,” she murmured, and Yuuri did not step backwards like he so wanted to. He stood still. “Tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Yuuri whispered. Mari smiled.

“And now you’re guilty of lying to me again, Yuuri.”

“It’s not--”

“Mhmm.” Mari removed her fingers from his cheek. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. I know.”

Yuuri said, “You don't.”

His sister laughed. “You’re actually incredibly transparent, Yuuri, if one knows how to look.”

“Don’t tell Mom.” It was so damned childish of him to say, the plea almost made the both of them smile.

“Tell him I said thanks,” Mari whispered. “For keeping his promise.”

Katsuki Yuuri nodded. He said, “I will.”

* * *

Yuuri’s hands were cold. He cupped them before his face and breathed warm air against his fingers. Beneath his feet, the pavement was slick with ice and slippery with dusty snow.

He had entrusted Minami Kenjirou to the Nishigoris. He had informed the rest of the Katsukis that he would not be within reach for the holidays, and if they encountered trouble that they should contact Yuko. He had asked Yuko not to call him unless it was important.

Katsuki Yuuri was alone.

The Corvette was new. Yuuri wondered why he needed a new car when he had so many already. It was sleeker than the Camaro had been but still black, and Yuuri would not admit today or any day closely follow that he was minorly taken with it. (Though he very much was.)

Viktor Nikiforov stepped out of the car, and he did not speak. He stripped his gloves from his hands and gave them silently to Katsuki Yuuri.

They were tailored perfectly for Viktor, and so they were a bit loose across the backs of Yuuri’s hands, a fraction too long for his fingers. Still, Yuuri nodded, and his slight smile was one of gratitude.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “I think I’ve become unaccustomed to your winters, with all my time in Japan.”

Viktor Nikiforov said nothing. He gazed at Katsuki Yuuri like he half believed he was not truly here. Yuuri tipped up his own face so he could look into Viktor’s.

“Are we alone?” Yuuri asked. Softly, Viktor nodded.

Yuuri reached upward to brush the snow from Viktor’s hair, and at the same time Viktor turned his face downward and kissed him.

And Yuuri laughed as he laced his fingers against the back of Viktor’s neck. Then he unlaced them and expertly removed his gloves behind Viktor’s head so Yuuri could properly touch him.

He had come to miss touch so _much_ while alone. He craved it now like had had not since his time in solitary at Fuchū, like he had not since returning to Petersburg for the first time. To touch Viktor Nikiforov now was like realizing for the first time how alone Yuuri had been in Osaka, and how quiet his soul had sat within him. To touch him now was to remember that things had sound and movement and color, here against his chest. In Saint Petersburg.

Katsuki Yuuri was the one who at last pulled away. “This is lovely, really,” he said with another soft laugh. “But I think my face has gone numb.”

“I’m sorry.” Viktor blinked. They were the first words he had spoken in person to him in months. “It’s cold.”

It was cold. Yuuri nodded in the direction of the Corvette. “New car.”

“Um.” Viktor turned dreamily to glance at the automobile. “Yes. An early gift from Chris and Mila. But it’s--um--fair warning, because I think they had Georgi bug it.”

“Oh.” Yuuri smiled. “I suppose they don't want to lose you again, do they? Though that does mean you can’t fuck in it.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor murmured, and sagely Yuuri nodded.

“I guess it’s never stopped us before.”

_“Yuuri.”_ Viktor tipped back his head and laughed. But upon his noticing that Yuuri was no longer wearing his gloves, Viktor took Yuuri’s hands into his own and silently tugged them back on.

“Thank you. Again.”

Already Katsuki Yuuri’s tone had softened, become less Petersburg-era cutting and more like the man he had been during the past few months in Japan. Quieter, gentler. Older. He closed his eyes and felt Viktor carefully sweep the snow from his shoulders. He allowed him to touch him in this soft, unassuming way without protest.

“Are you going to take me home now, my love?”

* * *

“You got different glasses.”

They were the first non-hostile words he had said to him in three days. Yuuri did not look up, but he nodded.

“The blue ones were from my parents. I wouldn’t have replaced them before.”

“The blue ones were ugly.”

Yuuri hummed. “Your opinion is valued,” he said in a tone which communicated quite simply that it was not.

Yuri Plisetsky said, “Are you planning on leaving us again?”

Now, Katsuki Yuuri looked up. He knew this was the question Plisetsky had been skirting around, smartly avoiding, for days. He knew he had wanted to demand an answer to such a question from the beginning, as soon as Yuuri had returned to Petersburg for the second time. He also knew that the posing of the question like this was intended to wound, to inspire guilt. Yuuri did not appreciate that.

“Who is _us?”_ he said. He tilted his head to the left. “Does that include you? Viktor? Makkachin?”

“Don’t mock me,” Plisetsky mumbled. He cast his gaze downward; he was not brave enough to challenge Katsuki Yuuri and look him in the eye simultaneously. “Whatever.”

Yuuri was working at Viktor Nikiforov’s desk. When Plisetsky did not leave, he set down his pen (his Russian handwriting had worsened exponentially in his months without regular practice) and he said, “I will be leaving again, yes. You both know that.”

“Both?” Yuri Plisetsky shot back, mimicking the manner in which Katsuki Yuuri had asked him _us?_ It made the latter smile.

“You’re on poor terms with Viktor at the moment, aren't you?”

“You told him I didn't want to work for the family,” Plisetsky accused. Yuuri nodded.

“I did. Were _you_ going to?”

Yuri Plisetsky blushed. He said, “Eventually.”

“Eventually. Well, I saved you the trouble.” Yuuri directed his attention again to the files Popovich had reportedly stolen from a Kremlin database which had sat unread on Viktor’s desk for three weeks. “Was he angry?”

“He--” Yuri began to retort fiercely, then paused. Looked to the floor. “No. He wasn’t angry.”

“Hm.”

“Disappointed,” Yuri Plisetsky said quietly. “But not angry.”

“I’m sure he’ll get over it.” The words were a dismissal. Yuri Plisetsky did not appear to find himself dismissed.

He took an audibly deep breath. Then he said, “Yuuri.”

“Yes?” Yuuri would not be irritated with him. Nevertheless, the youngest Plisetsky’s inability to heed signals that he was unwanted was incredibly inconvenient. “What do you need, Yura?”

“How--” Yuri appeared to lose his nerve. He exhaled, cast his gaze to the floor, then steeled himself. “How is your family?”

Katsuki Yuuri tilted his head. He folded his hands very neatly before him. “My family is doing well,” he replied. “Why do you want to know?”

Annoyance flashed in Plisetsky’s expression. “Well, I’m trying this thing where I’m not an asshole all the time, and I just wanted to be _nice--”_

“Hm.” Yuuri smiled. “And you were just doing so well.”

“Yeah. Well.” Plisetsky carded a hand through his loose hair. It had grown longer since Yuuri had last seen him face to face, sitting at the relaxed line of his shoulders, and he had taken to braiding the front portion back. When he did so, it made his face look sharper. He had begun to look a bit like Viktor had at seventeen, an age which Yuri Plisetsky would soon be turning. The sharpness of his face was not yet synonymous with cruelty, and Yuuri thought this was a good sign. “It’s a work in progress.”

“Have you begun to think about what you want to do?” Yuuri asked. “Instead of this?”

“Not really.” Yuri shrugged, like he was embarrassed of his own short-sightedness. Perhaps he was. Viktor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri had known exactly what they wanted to do with their lives at sixteen, and their lofty career goals had set quite the precedent. “I was thinking of asking you if--if it was a good idea to travel. Beka wants to show me Kazakhstan.”

“Kazakhstan.” Yuuri turned his face upward and considered. “Give it a year, perhaps. Let things become quiet again.”

“Quiet,” Plisetsky repeated softly. “A year.”

“Is a year alright?” Katsuki Yuuri smiled kindly. “Are there pressing matters to attend to in Kazakhstan?”

Viktor Nikiforov’s former heir studied his hands. He said, “No. A year is fine.”

“I’m glad.” Yuuri turned back to his work. Plisetsky still did not leave.

He said, “Yuuri.”

“Yes, Yura.” When he looked up again, Yuri Plisetsky’s face was steadily turning pink.

“Thank you for coming home again,” he whispered. “Even if it’s not permanent.” Yuri Plisetsky looked down sheepishly. “Things--things are better when you’re home. He’s better when you're home.”

“I’m happy to hear it, Yura,” Katsuki Yuuri said quietly. “Thank you for saying so.”

“Yeah,” Yuri Plisetsky whispered. He left, this time without Yuuri’s pointed dismissal, and the word haunted the room long after he had gone. _Home_.

* * *

At home, the days bled into one another. Quietly, without warning, it became the twenty-fifth of December.

“I’m thirty,” Viktor said in the evening, after dinner. The belated announcement was subdued; he seemed disenchanted with the process of turning one year older by now, even after the many factors which had aimed to prevent such this year.

Yuuri had not forgotten the date. Yuuri had kissed Viktor one thousand times while they were still in bed, along every single one of his ribs and up his throat and against his jaw all the way to the curve of his ear, and he had whispered, “Happy birthday, love.” Viktor had smiled then, but even so he had been reticent about it. The quiet had made Katsuki Yuuri frown then, and it made him frown now.

“Does that upset you?”

Viktor Nikiforov’s brow knit. He said, “I don’t know.”

“You made it,” Yuuri reminded him softly. “I’m happy for you.”

“There was a time when you didn't want me to make it,” Viktor pointed out, and Yuuri tilted his head to the side.

“Is that what this is about?”

“No.” Viktor frowned. His hands fluttered nervously before him, like startled birds. “I don’t know. I think--”

He shook his head. Patiently, Yuuri waited.

“I think it’s that I didn't spend so many of these recent years--you know. I think I wasted them.” Viktor Nikiforov took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t--I don't know. I should have done better.”

“We have plenty of years left, if we're lucky,” Yuuri said.

“Will you stay?” Viktor looked up suddenly, and his gaze was arresting in its desperation. On one of his anxiously twisting and turning hands flashed the gold wedding band Yuuri had returned to him months ago. “Will you stay for the rest of them?”

Yuuri was still seated at the table. Quietly, he got up. “I can’t stay for them all,” he said, and he felt when he laid his hands on Viktor Nikiforov how it took the fight out of him. Still, he went on. “I have business in Tokyo. I can’t always be here.”

“I wish you could.” Outside, the winter had brought early darkness. It had begun to snow, falling silently about the house, keeping the two of them in and alone.

Yuuri hummed. He said softly, teasingly, “What would you do to keep me?”

“Anything.”

Of all his words, this was somehow the least pleading. His tone, his expression, were not those of a begging man when he said it. To Yuuri, this _anything_ was more a statement of fact that an act of desperation.

Gently, Yuuri smiled. He said nothing.

“Yuuri.” Viktor shook his head now, as if to dispel something greater which had possessed his thoughts. “I didn’t mean to--”

“I know.”

His hands were still on Viktor’s shoulders. Yuuri slid one of them down to just above his waist and waited.

He realized now, looking at the tinge of pink to his cheeks and the shallow cadence of his breathing, that Viktor was slightly drunk. This was not unconscionable; there had been free-flowing wine with dinner. Yuuri was perhaps slightly drunk too. The alcohol made Yuuri warm, and it made Viktor brave.

Yuuri led the waltz this time around. Viktor Nikiforov bowed graciously to his taking control, mirroring Yuuri’s movements to a dreamily slow tempo. After a moment, he closed his eyes and let Yuuri take him in gently inelegant circles around the dining room.

“I had a dream like this recently,” Yuuri said in the quiet. He watched over Viktor’s shoulder the silent snow drift against the window panes. “Just like this.”

“Me too,” Viktor whispered. “I dreamt this.”

“Solipsists, the two of us.” Yuuri smiled. Viktor shook his head.

“I would rather you stayed real,” he murmured. Katsuki Yuuri laughed.

“Then I’ll keep to being real,” he promised. When Viktor again closed his eyes, Yuuri pressed a quick, chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth. The unexpected contact made Viktor stumble, and Yuuri caught him with a steadying hand at his back. “Easy.”

A hum which was a bit louder than a whisper now: “Mm. Think I’m drunk.”

“Yes,” Yuuri agreed. He did not mention his own less-than-sober state. The room was even more red and glittering with a bit of wine in him, and he liked the slightly dizzying feeling the alcohol brought along with it. “But the color suits you.”

“That’s alright then,” Viktor murmured. “As long as I’m pretty.”

Katsuki Yuuri laughed again. “And thirty looks good on you, Viktor.”

“Oh.” A suggestion of a blush humbled him. “Good. I had worried.”

“There was no need,” Yuuri whispered. He brought up his hand to Viktor’s face slowly. They had stopped waltzing at some point, but he did not know when. “You’re beautiful, _anata.”_

Viktor smiled. “And you’re drunk.”

Yuuri laughed, then touched his fingertips lightly to the ridge of Viktor’s cheekbone. “Very much drunk,” he agreed with a hum. “Must be because I’m getting old.”

“Don’t say that.” Viktor traced his own fingers along the beginning vertebrae of Yuuri’s spine. “I’m older than you.”

“Mm.” Yuuri buried his face in his shoulder and inhaled. “Happy birthday again, Vitya. Here’s to many more.”

“With you.”

Even drunk, Yuuri took his time in agreeing. Against Viktor’s shoulder, finally, he nodded. “With me.”

They stood for a very long while like that, Katsuki Yuuri with his face buried in Viktor Nikiforov’s shoulder and his fingers splayed against his back, Viktor Nikiforov with his head turned slightly to the side so he could pressed his mouth to Yuuri’s hair and catch at the edges of it with the hand positioned further up on his back. After several minuscule eternities, Viktor spoke.

“You’re thinking about something,” he murmured. “Tell me what it is.”

“I’m not thinking,” Yuuri mumbled against his shirt. He felt Viktor smile against his cheek.

“You’re going to lie to me on my birthday, Yura?”

“Mm.” Yuuri looped an arm around the back of his neck. “Maybe.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor whined, and Yuuri relented. He combed his right hand upward through Viktor’s hair, so he could press his palm flat against the base of his skull and hold him there.

“I’m thinking about this. That I would be okay with this--with this being forever.” He hummed. “Do you feel that too? Or am I drunk and making a fool of myself?”

“No,” Viktor murmured. Softly, he kissed Yuuri’s right temple. “No, I feel it too. You’re not a fool, Yura.”

“Oh. Good.” Yuuri smiled. “Do you know what else I’m thinking about?”

Viktor hummed. “I can guess.”

“I’m thinking about how I’m going to carry you upstairs, Viktor Nikiforov--” Slowly, Yuuri mouthed at his neck. “And I’m going to take off your clothes.” His fingers worked deftly at the beginning buttons of Viktor’s collar. Yuuri tipped up his face and feigned reconsideration. “But perhaps not necessarily in that order. And do you want to tell me what I will do next?”

“Oh, are you taking suggestions?” Viktor murmured. His voice was low. Yuuri’s hands slid coolly, professionally along the inside of his shirt. “I’d love to give suggestions.”

“It’s for you,” Yuuri said. He wound his hands firmly in the loose fabric of Viktor’s undone shirt. “I’ll do any damn thing you like, _anata.”_

Viktor Nikiforov looked at him with a smile. He said, “I believe I’ve had a dream like this too,” and Yuuri laughed quietly from his chest.

“I’ve had plenty of dreams like this, my love.” He brought his left hand, which had previously been wrapped in the fabric of Viktor’s shirt, over his eyes and guided him the short distance to the dining table. Viktor leaned deeply over the surface, thought Yuuri kept him suspended just above the polished wood by his grip on his collar. “The real thing tends to be better.”

“Mm.” Viktor tipped his head back. Yuuri’s hand, which was still over his eyes, tipped with it and unbalanced Katsuki Yuuri so that he stumbled slightly. Viktor laughed lowly and took advantage of such to pull Yuuri wholly on top of him. His back was flush with the table’s surface now. “Show me.”

“Here?” Yuuri withdrew his hand so he could kisa just beneath his eyes. His fingers worked nimbly at the rest of the buttons on Viktor’s shirt. His voice was teasing. “Surely a bed would be better, Vitya. Fucking on unconventional surfaces is for twenty-somethings, isn’t it?”

Viktor appeared to miss the jest. His soft response was entirely earnest. “Anywhere. Anywhere with you, love.”

“Mm.” Yuuri smiled, with teeth. “You’re lucky you’re pretty, _anata.”_

“Yes,” Viktor murmured. He added clumsily, “I would be okay too. With--with this being forever.”

“Would you?” Yuuri placed a hand flat against Viktor’s chest. God, he was drunk. Viktor was drunk. They were both very drunk. Yuuri missed the old days, when it took several martinis and a few more bumps of coke to make him unsteady on his feet.

Christ, he was losing his touch, wasn’t he? _The old days_. He talked as if he was retired, or dying. Yuuri wasn’t retired or dying yet, was he?

Did he care if he was? Viktor was here. Yuuri had promised Kenjirou that he would return within the month, Yuko that he would keep his head firmly on his shoulders this time around, Mari that he would be a better man now. But did any of that matter, here in Saint Petersburg? Yuuri was _Yuuri_ here, and that was all. That was good.

“Yeah,” Viktor murmured. Yuuri ached to slip his fingers into his mouth, against his teeth. He resisted the desire and let Viktor speak. “Forever is good here. Like this.”

It wasn’t forever--couldn’t be forever. Yuuri knew this. Yuuri had a job in Osaka, a debt to Minako’s Tokyo. And he had a family in Busan and friends in Bangkok and Kyoto, all of whom had made him promise to come back from Russia again.

But he could pretend, couldn’t he? He could lie to himself, just for a night. And in the spring, he would call Viktor and extend an invitation to visit Osaka for hanami. Forever in short and unscripted touches, forever day by day, forever when it was allowed.

Yuuri could do that. Softly, all his previous teasing forgotten, Yuuri touched his mouth briefly to Viktor’s, and then pressed their foreheads together gently. He said, “This is more than we deserve.”

“I’m okay with that,” Viktor hummed. Yuuri felt it when he smiled. “I don’t care for violent ends.”

“No,” Yuuri agreed. Phichit Chulanont’s words revisited him now. _Do you think this is where you want it to end?_   
“No, me neither, _anata_. This is good.”

_“Anata,”_ Viktor echoed, right before Yuuri kissed him.

Outside, the late December snow had begun to fall more heavily, swirling gleefully against the windowpanes. They would be snowed in by the morning. Yuuri didn’t mind. A quiet morning would only gift them with more time for sleepy morning sex in Viktor’s bed, for soft professions of affection and much kissing of hands and drowsy movement of chilled limbs beneath warmed sheets. There was no better way to spend one’s first full day of being thirty than such, after all. Business and responsibility be damned.

Softly against Viktor Nikiforov’s mouth, Yuuri laughed. He said, “Let's go upstairs, Vitya,” and they did.

_This is good,_ Yuuri thought as he slung his arm around Viktor’s neck, as Viktor braced a gentle hand between his shoulders so Yuuri would not stumble. _This is good, and it will last._

And it was, and it would. By the morning, Saint Petersburg was blanketed in the soft white snow of new things.

* * *

_“Twelve thousand moons for one moon long ago, isn’t that too much?”_

_“Don’t trouble yourself here, Margarita. Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a line in the poetry cycle at the end of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, in the poem Meeting, which goes, "And therefore everything / on this snowy night is doubled, / and I can draw no boundary / between myself and you." 
> 
> I recommend reading the whole poem--it's easily found in translation, though Pasternak is one of those writers my professor will insist you can't read in anything but the original Russian (read the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, if you can). actually, the main character and antagonist of Zhivago are named Yuri and Viktor, respectively, and they get much less happy endings than this.
> 
> the line at the end is from bulgakov, of course. i very much wanted the final lines of this fic to be ones spoken by Satan in the master and margarita, and so they are.
> 
> thank you so very much for supporting this work, both to those of you who have been reading since the first chapters and everyone else who picked it up along the way. I started planning this monstrous thing in april of 2017, and it feels strange to finally be done with it. on to other things, i suppose. :)
> 
> you can find me here or on my tumblr (the url is fortinbra) and as always, thank you so much for all comments and kudos.
> 
> xx


End file.
